Challenge

Bringing together top researchers and industrial partners from across Europe in view of developing new, digital and human-oriented robot technology to make robotics available, cyber-secure, competitive and affordable for companies of any size.

 

Project goals

  • Creating a network of digital innovation hubs (DIHs) composed of Research Centres and University Groups in view of increasing agility in production by introducing novel robotics solutions:
    • specialised in Advanced Robotics
    • Internet of Things (IoT),
    • supported by a DIH with experts in cyber security for robots
  • Ensuring the continued existence of this network throughout the project lifetime by building a sustainable business model.
  • Delivering a critical mass of use case demonstrations in collaboration with industrial partners to increase the competitiveness of European companies.

Trinity business model

 

Economic value

TRINITY will establish a network of Digital Innovation Hubs. This is central to connecting SMEs to world-class researchers and research facilities, thereby increasing the amount of new prototypes and reducing the lead time for practical applications and innovations (e.g. by decreasing time-to-profit). In these DIHs, demonstrations will be conducted in conjunction with SMEs and mid-caps.

In this way, cooperation between researchers, technology providers and first-time users can be supported, concerns related to cyber security can be addressed  and recent developments can be put into practice. Creating a multi-layer network is just one of the goals. For this purpose, a local Digital Innovation Hub will be established in every partner country (insofar as it doesn't already exist), joining research institutes, technology providers, and regional first-time users, i.e. local manufacturing companies. The research institutes will host the physical facilities and thus, act as local competence centres. They will be supplemented by providers of nontechnical services, e.g. technology transfer organisations, patent offices and investment experts, together forming a local Digital Innovation Hub.

In addition, these local actors will be connected to an international network of existing DIHs, pilot networks and ICT/I4MS Hub/DIHs so as to promote the exchange of knowledge and experience on a European level and establish direct communication channels. As such, a comprehensive network of competences can be built in both of the aforementioned areas. The economic sustainability of local DIHs, attracting investments and connecting training needs to training providers has been outlined in the Business Plan. The sustainability of local DIHs will be achieved by creating a TRINITY society consisting of internationaly connected national sub-societies. 

Use case demonstrations will also be carried out by companies, using the hardware and software infrastructure provided by the TRINITY consortium. The success of the open call will depend on the communication activities. That is why the TRINITY consortium has taken 6 cluster organisations on-board. Together, they will reach 2000 companies within their inner network and by combining the networks of all consortium members we expect to reach over 10000 companies in both calls.

The purpose of the open call is to fund a particular experiment proposed by a consortium in view of achieving a success story with the chosen technology or technologies. The scale ranges between 50.000 € and 300.000 €. This may include, for instance, a new type of robot for which some degree of development work as well as some outsourcing to technology providers will still be needed. The call committee will allocate over 50% of the total TRINITY budget to finane the activities and costs of these third parties.

Contact

Please contact project leader Asad Tirmizi for more information.