BETP

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Company info:

Name: Kalmia d.o.o.
Date founded: 2016
Number of employees: 15
Location: Škofja Loka, Slovenia

Team of experienced software brewers gathered together with an aim to build innovative web and mobile apps for our awesome clients: choose the best technologies, build a product, design software architecture and great user experience.

https://kalmia.si/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

BETP: Blockchain Enabled Traceability Platform

Challenge

As automotive industry is moving towards digitalization various vendors and their suppliers are looking for new ways to manipulate existing processes. New digitalization approaches will influence development and manufacturing of new vehicles in many areas including traceability.

Kalmia aims to prepare a model of standalone API driven blockchain platform that is ready to integrate with future third-party business applications within various industries providing a functionality of storing, manipulating and evaluating data on the blockchain in order to provide traceability

Solution

Most of current blockchain based solutions request extensive knowledge of distributed ledger technologies by the developers and integrators to deploy applications on the top of them.

Kalmia is developing a platform that hide all the blockchain complexity and is to be blockchain agnostic. Kalmia goal is to offer solution on the top of the state-of-the-art technology and bring it closer to the industry..

FED4SAE Support

Through fruitful and constructive exchanges, AVL and fortiss brought technical support and expertise regarding:

  • IODP platform features and industrial customer needs (AVL)
  • The added value BETP will bring to AVL IODP platform (AVL & fortiss)
  • The technical aspect of the BETP, (AVL & fortiss)
  • Detailed discussion of BETP architecture (fortiss)
  • Contact with potential customers in Bavaria (fortiss)

Blumorpho supported Kalmia broader business model around BETP.

FED4SAE ecosystem has helped to evaluate the true value of BETP solution, offered the opportunity of BETP product first public presentation and will continue helping with further development.

Impact

Strong impact on Kalmia future development is based by providing a stand-alone solution viable for the market. The cooperation with AVL (an industrial platform provider) has accelerated the product development and (especially) business development by providing better understanding and access to the automotive market.
This will work as a strong reference for gaining new customers inside other industries and will result in increasing our revenues and global customer base. Our blockchain and industrial digitalisation expertise is planned to provide 30% year-to-year revenue growth in next 5 years.

BETTAIR

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Company info:

Name: Bettair Cities SL
Date founded: 2017
Number of employees: 7
Location: Can Roses 45 Cornella de Llobregat 08940 Barcelona, Spain.

www.bettaircities.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Mapping Urban Air Quality In High Resolution

Challenge

Air pollution in cities is an EU and Global challenge that most developed and developing countries are facing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ambient air pollution kills over 4 million people every year, largely in cities. It is an invisible killer, and the problem is increasing due to unprecedented population growth in cities.

Solution

Bettair® is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that permits, for the first time, to map air and noise pollution in cities on a previously unimaginable scale based on a large deployment of outstandingly accurate gas sensors by using an advanced post-processing algorithm.

The information provided by the bettair® platform allows cities to implement appropriate urban plans to enhance the air quality and to make smart and better decisions to mitigate air pollution. The bettair® nodes are composed count with up to 6 electrochemical sensors to measure gases, an Optical Particle Counter to measure PMs, noise pollution sensor, and other ambient quality indicators. A complete front and back-end solution is provided to municipalities and an APP for the citizens.

Our platform (which is a complementary network to traditional air quality monitoring equipment) will perfectly assist cities to i) identify unknown air or noise pollution sources, ii) to assess the impact and effects of different environmental actions to identify the most effective ones, and iii) recommend specific local actions.

FED4SAE Support

With the support of FED4SAE, we will migrate the current MCU solution used to an STM32 processor family taking advantage of the features offered by this processor family: high performance, real-time capabilities, digital signal processing, and low-power operation while maintaining full integration and ease of development. Additionally, a LoRaWAN module will be integrated into the Bettair® static node. The new devices have been tested in London (with support from Digital Catapult) and in Cantabria (with support from the University of Cantabria).

Achievements

Thanks to the execution of the Application Experiment in FED4SAE, Bettair® nodes hardware has been updated with a new STM32 processor, drastically reducing the power consumption of the node, while enabling new features, including the integration of LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technologies, such as LoRaWAN.
In this regard, LoRaWAN has not only been implemented, but also extensively tested in real-world scenarios, including the Smart City SmartSantander testbed in Santander (Cantabria), and the DigitalCatapult laboratory testbed, where extensive power consumption tests have been carried out. It is also worth mentioning that, during this time, the company has been awarded with the ship2be label as a company with social and environmental impact, thanks to a growing and more specialized team

Impact

Bettair® platform will permit cities to mitigate air pollution and the benefits of our technology will have a tremendous impact on environmental and societal issues. Air pollution affects vegetation, the quality of water and soil, and the ecosystem services that they support.

In addition, several air pollutants are also climate forcers, which have a potential impact on the planet’s climate and global warming in the short term (i.e. decades). In terms of human health and society, the direct benefits of improving quality of life are remarkable considering that air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk in Europe.

With Bettair® the most cost-effective local actions can be identified to efficiently reduce pollution; studies have shown pollution can be reduced up to 30% or more in cities with just local actions.

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C2MicroCar

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Company info:

Name: Kineton SRL

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

C2MicroCar

ECO-Smart Homes

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Company info:

Name: Check BnB, S.L.
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 3
Location: C/ La Gitanilla, Nave 1, 29004, Málaga, Spain

www.checkbnb.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Saving Energy and reducing Energy waste for Eco Smart Short rental Holidays Home

Challenge

The users of a holiday rental property enjoy an “all included” business model. Under this system, human behaviour is often unconservative, generating a waste of resources that would otherwise be precious, relative to the cost of energy or water, and thus increasing the carbon footprint and the owner spending. This sector consists of 97 million beds in the world, accounting for 25% of the global hotel supply, and continues to grow increasing the problem and leading to accelerating the climate change.

Solution

Through a measurement system based in energy consumption sensors, a predictive algorithm and smartphone app, a recommended energy consumption budget is generated for the duration of the whole stay, according to the number and age of the tenants, as well as the weather forecast. This budget is made available to the tenants and homeowners in a challenge or gaming mode, so that they can meet expectations on a daily basis, generating alarms and educational tips as well as gratifications and compliments, depending on their behaviour with respect to the estimated budget.

The energy consumption is monitored in real time and can be analysed by all users through the app. The immediate result of this supervision is a greater interest in not squandering. Once the challenge is over, the users will receive a financial bonus if they have fulfilled it, which they will be able to recover or donate to an NGO, as well as keep a good-behaviour score.

The app shall also solve other issues and situations related to holiday rental, providing the tenants with a greater comfort and a better and more professional service by the owner.

FED4SAE Support

With the support of FED4SAE we have been able to partially finance the development of the app, the measurement hardware and the kick-off of a pilot project with 10 houses in the city of Santander. At the same time, the partners of the project have provided technical and economic support, and they have opened the possibility for investors to implement this app as a standard for Eco Smart Holiday Homes.

Achievements

By using STMicroelectronics technology and support, EnergyCcM has been able to create a functional device, known as CcMaster, fulfilling all the requirements. This prototype has been certified by Telefonica, which is one of their partners, and is currently being commercialized in a different context as monitoring system for energy systems.

On the other hand, CheckBnB have developed an integrated mobile application to deliver their green “energy budget” vision to the holiday rental market, includes additional functionality to help P2P accommodation and deliver real-time location-based context information to guests, taking advantage of the Smart City and IoT domain know-how from University of Cantabria.

As a result, CheckBnB was awarded 2nd place as Spanish national best energy efficiency start-up company. Last but not least, the commercial and marketing skills acquired through the close collaboration with Blumorpho have helped them to bring their solution to the market and increase the odds to attract new investors.
During 2020, COVID19 impact on tourism sector prevented CheckBnB to fully complete the project and APP CheckBnB mobile application development needed to be postponed. Still, the CcMaster hardware created in the context of FED4SAE supported application experiment has been reused by EnergyCcM on a completely different domain. In this sense, they have pivoted its original use on rental apartments towards solar energy and public lightning sectors.

Impact

Our challenge to achieve the greatest possible impact is to disseminate the system through prestigious NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF, and thus raise awareness among users in order to not waste precious resources. In the same manner, the objective is to convince homeowners to invest in a system that will bring short-term economic benefits and help combat climate change.

The main objective is to make this system a standard filter, similar to price or rating, according to user comments in the big management channels (AirBnB, Home Away, etc). If we were to achieve this goal, the impact would be of incredible dimensions and it would help very effectively to combat climate change.

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Embrace

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Company info:

Name: Protolab srl
Date founded: 2010
Number of employees: 5
Location: Padua, Italy

High-tech SME developing innovative complete solutions tailored to customer needs and providing integrated systems & services.

http://www.protolab.it/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Development of a smart sensor kit for monitoring of scoliosis treatment braces

Challenge

Each year about 2% of European teenagers must be treated with braces (spinal orthosis) to counteract the evolution of scoliotic curve by applying a mechanical stress against the body and favouring the correct posture of rachis. Despite the need of recording the exerted pressure expressed by orthopaedic specialists, there is currently no device available, in the market, able to quantitatively measure acting forces inside the braces and to monitor the wearing time. Market analysis outlines big potential in the scoliosis management market, stressing increasing year to year demand still not satisfied by products on the market. It also identifies among main drivers the advancement of technology with tracking devices that can monitor the patient health evolution.

Solution

Protolab aims at: i) developing an innovative plug & play wearable sensor kit for monitoring the pressure inside scoliosis braces, ii) improving the compliance with medical prescriptions and iii) boosting the patient active participation in order to reach satisfying results from the care treatment. Digitization will boost the development of automated analysis to frequently check treatment progresses, while the availability of gathered data will allow the use of predictive algorithms to favour rapid intervention in case of wrong trends, thus favouring the active participation of the patient to the care treatment.

FED4SAE Support

Thanks to FED4SAE project that leverages the collaboration with ST Microelectronics, CEA-Leti and IRT Nanoelec, Protolab developed a prototype system based on STM32WB microcontroller that integrates all the hardware means to support Bluetooth™ 5.0 and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standards such as ZigBee 3.0 and Openthread. The STM32WB is used to collect data from sensors, to process and then to transfer them via BLE to a dedicated smartphone App.

Tests of the new prototype data communication in realistic conditions were performed in collaboration with Products & Technologies Living-Lab (PTL) of IRT Nanoelec at CEA-Leti in Grenoble. The cybersecurity and privacy risk analysis and the evaluation of regulatory constraints related to patient’s data management were assessed as well with the support of CEA-Leti.

Blumorpho’s innovation management services helped Protolab in the identification of the strategy and the statutory constraints to secure the go-to-market strategy as well as to seek investors.

Impact

Protolab developed a miniaturized and integrated solution tested in realistic environment.

Product qualification and certifications were launched in July 2020. Protolab planned to enter the market in the early 2021 (customer acquisition).

Embrace enters a Global Scoliosis management Market estimated in 2B$. A rough estimate of investments needs, viability and sustainability of business has been carried out with an analysis of incremental costs and revenues that Protolab will tackle to enter the new market. The estimated financial requirement is about 1.4 Mn EUR, while the Break-Even Point will be reached within five years at about 3000 kits/year.

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GHOST

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Company info:

Name: Ghost Labs AB
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 7
Location: Stockholm

www.ghostnodes.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Edge Computing made Simple

Challenge

With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the benefits of the IoT technologies are being exploited by Manufacturing industries to connect and control infrastructure. However, integration has become more difficult to handle. It has also become a capability that drives huge costs. When Industry extend business globally, adds new applications and more computing paradigms, e.g. B2B growth, cloud adaptation (SaaS), social, mobile, and IoT/IIoT, just to name a few. The old integration standards are not fit for purpose anymore. So the challenge is how can you connect all of these existing legacy plant, manufacturing tools and infrastructure to enable these rich insights and control.

Solution

The Ghostnodes integration platform is fully distributed and also has proven capabilities as the key component in high frequency data collection and aggregation. It also ensures that logic can be pushed back out to an operating node (e.g. edge computing). This is typical for IoT/IIoT integration scenarios.

By providing a lightweight agent which can be deployed at the edge and interface with manufacturing tools (CNC Machines), sensors or device manufacturers API to enable legacy machines to become “smart and connected”.

The Ghostnodes solution also provides a customisable rules based engine that enables the nodes to act on processed data. The Ghost Nodes platform will also have an integration with the Siemens Polarion Platform.

Support from FED4SAE

The support from FED4SAE can be summarized in three categories:

  • Hardware: Intel has provided relevant insights in large hardware corporations strategies for smart manufacturing and their positioning in the smart manufacturing value chain.
  • Documented Industry Standards: KTH and Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) has supported with specifications for OSLC standards for large-scale and easily maintainable integrations in heterogeneous environments.
  • Business Development and Networking: Bluemorpho and KTH has connected Ghostnodes with companies and start-ups across Europe for highly valuable collaborations.

Impact

Being part of the FED4SAE project have supported the company and enabled GhostLabs to develop its business in a number of different ways:

  • The Ghost Nodes software platform is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
  • New business relationships have been established or strengthen with a number of major international clients within the domain of smart-manufacturing, transportation and Healthcare. To name a few; SANDVIK Coromant, SODEXO and TransDev.
  • GhostLabs have developed a robust business model and business plan allowing for strategic discussions with potential partners and investors.
  • GhostLabs have expanded its pan-European network significantly thanks to outreach activities organised by the project.

Video

https://youtu.be/Vr0MT06-fVs

IDRD

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Company info:

Name: Ubotica Technologies Ltd.
Date founded: 2016
Number of employees: 12
Location: Dublin, Ireland; Ciudad Real, Spain

Irish SME focused on delivering computer vision and AI based solutions on-the-edge.

www.ubotica.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

IDRD: In-Line Diabetic Retinopathy Detection

Challenge

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of vision loss in adults aged between 25 and 60, with a recent study estimating that the number of people worldwide with DR will grow to 191 million by 2030. When DR is caught early, treatment is effective at reducing or preventing vision loss. Only a very small number of countries have national screening programmes for DR detection in place, and they are costly to run.

Solution

Ubotica has developed a deep-learning based solution for detecting the presence of DR indicators in retinal images on-the-edge, in the specialist fundus cameras that take these images. The solution has been designed to assist ophthalmologists to accurately and consistently evaluate and diagnose DR. To support this, it also provides information related to the basis on which the assessment was made.

Achievements

A light weight solution has been developed around the embeddable Intel Movidius Myriad X Vision Processing Unit (VPU), which pre-processes the retinal images using its on-board image filtering capabilities and then applies an Artificial Intelligence Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to assess the retinal image for DR indicators. Runtime analysis with the Neural Network Dependability Kit (NNDK) is applied to display to the user the CNN training images which most closely match the image being analysed. This introduces a level of confidence to In-Line Diabetic Retinopathy Detection that heretofore was not possible, adding a Verifiable AI element. The integration of the working prototype with a retinal imaging camera has been demonstrated.

FED4SAE Support

A significant challenge in the deployment of AI based solutions is in the supervising of decisions of the CNNs which are at the core of these systems. Addressing this, fortiss supported in interpreting the NNDK metrics for assessing the performance of the CNN, also after a vigorous pruning process to reduce the model’s size and make inference faster, and in integrating the runtime analysis into the application. Depending on their specialization, all FED4SAE partners provided input to refine the technical approach and business case, and joint dissemination opportunities were exploited.

Impact

Ubotica are working with fundus camera manufacturers to introduce the solution to the marketplace, offering customization and design-in services for the VPU, CNN and associated software. The NNDK’s supervisory role on the decisions being made by the CNNs delivers a significant benefit to solution integrators. Deploying Ubotica’s solution in fundus cameras will significantly enhance the role of both the cameras and the ophthalmologists who use the cameras, with further advances anticipated with the introduction of detectors for other pathologies, such as Glaucoma and Hypertension, all based on the same underlying hardware.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlCkOZ8aK_Y

INCOMING

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Company info:

Name: Zannini S.p.A.
Date founded: 1963
Number of employees: 150
Location: Castelfidardo (AN), Italy

Zannini is specialized in the production of high precision machined components for automotive applications.

www.zannini.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

INCOMING: smart Interface for COnnected MachinING operation

Challenge

Even in highly automated factories, gathering data from the many machines in order to be able to analyze and optimize the production process is not straightforward. Also, automating individual processes is one thing, but making systems interact and play together like a well-tuned orchestra is another challenge. Processes and equipment are diverse, so integration must be highly individualized. Conventional programming approaches are often too time consuming. Legacy equipment may not even have digital networking capabilities.

Solution

The INCOMING system is a new solution to integrate industrial manufacturing equipment of all kinds and generations for data acquisition and high-level control. It is designed to be easily set-up, scaled and modified, thanks to its open architecture. INCOMING allows machine operators and production managers to monitor and control status and parameter data from machines and bridges islands of automation to make production more efficient. The platform does not require high investments up-front and can grow with the needs of the customer.

Achievements

A device for integrating machines into the INCOMING system (DACB: Data Acquisition and Control Box) has been developed that is installed in or close to the machine, communicating with it and with retrofit sensors via industry-standard discrete signals or OPC UA.

Following open Internet of Things communication protocols, the DACBs exchange data with the INCOMING central server that hosts the operational data dashboards for the machines and provides a connection with other manufacturing IT systems

For validation, the system was deployed to three turning machines with three different generations of machine control technologies in Zannini’s Castelfidardo plant. Collecting status data and interlinking the machines with a smart material handling system, it has enabled a significant increase of their overall equipment efficiency (OEE).

FED4SAE Support

The cost-efficient DACB design prototype is based on the STM32MP1 hardware platform and OpenSTLinux operating system, for which STMicroelectronics provided technical support. The DACB’s application logic is built on the IEC 61499 compliant Eclipse 4diac platform for distributed industrial automation and control software, which fortiss ported to the STMicroelectronics runtime target and extended to meet the scenario’s requirements. Blumorpho provided business innovation related coaching.

Impact

Following the successful first deployment, the rollout of the INCOMING system will be continued at Zannini’s domestic and international sites wherever it can improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes and help gather valuable data faster. In addition, it forms the basis for a potential future product to be offered to external customers and supported through Zannini’s spin-off Z4tec, enabling them to monitor and optimize their own manufacturing processes.

Video

https://youtu.be/S6bDKRcytRc

IoT SG

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Company info:

Name: IoT Solutions Group
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 8
Location: Watford and Bournemouth, UK

www.iotsg.co.uk

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Driving efficiency and impact through real-time insight

Sensing solutions for 2020 and Beyond

Challenge

As technology advances and lifestyles change, consumer expectations increase. Financial pressures on local authorities and private enterprises continue to rise and the need to improve services to match growing expectations is ever-present.

Trials of IoT devices in the waste management industry indicate significant opportunities for savings of at least 35%. Some research has indicated that up to 87% of public bin collections are wasted, due to low fill rates. Incidents of fires in public bins have resulted in the need for one English council to replace two waste collection vehicles at a cost of £500k.

Traditional methods of delivering fundamental services struggle to provide continuous improvement and new ways must be sought. The potential benefits are clear and sizeable.

Solution

IoT Solutions Group has developed an end to end value chain, comprising sensing devices, edge processing and data dissemination.

We are working to combat the inefficiencies experienced across the waste management industry, improve environmental standards and eliminate instances of asset destruction.

Our devices detect the fill rate of bins, if they have been left open, overturned and potential incidents of fire. By tying up with multiple LPWAN solutions we are able to support the technological requirements of any local authority or waste management company and convert data to usable insight in real-time.

FED4SAE Support

With the support of FED4SAE and by working with Digital Catapult and STMicroelectronics our solution is utilising:

  • STM32F hardware platform
  • LPWAN platform supported by Digital Catapult – deploying SIGFOX and LoRaWAN connectivity

The FED4SAE support has enabled us to accelerate our sensor development and improved the effectiveness of our end to end solutions. The partnership has undoubtedly opened new doors and helped advance our reach into the market.

Impact

Our integrated waste management solutions provide local authorities and waste management operatives with the information they need to streamline collection services, enable emergency response and prevent high value asset write off.

Financial savings and opportunity cost benefits promise to be significant, whilst also enhancing local environments for residents and visitors.

By covering the full value chain, from hardware to insight, and designing bespoke solutions, we are able to provide clients with the insight they need, in the way they need it to address their priorities.

This approach also eliminates end users’ needs to procure the constituent parts of the chain separately, thus driving down the cost to deploy and maintain.

Achievements

Validated 3 communication technologies: Sigfox, LoraWAN and NB IoT.

Demonstrated savings > 50 % related to dynamically optimising bin collection and avoiding full bin events.

Obtained order from the UK’s market leading waste management company.

NanoLeak

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Company info:

Name: NanoTech Analysis S.r.l
Date founded: 2013
Number of employees: 4
Location: Turin

Operating in the field of fluid and chemical analysis measurements. Company’s vision is to laid the ground for instruments operating at molecular (nano)‐scale.

Nanotechanalysis.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Development of a smart sampling device based on NANOhole LEAKs for analytical instrumentation

Challenge

To miniaturize and to digitalize the gas sampling using combination of Nano Electro Mechanichal System (NEMS) and computing power that will lead to high resolution gas analyzer, multigas detectors, innovative GC-MS portable with electronic control and management signal that can be fully integrated on a chip structure.

Solution

The solution is based on an advanced fabrication technology that uses e-beam or stepper patterning to create the pores and then reduces the pore size in a controlled fashion. The pores an be closed off by a current-carrying beam, placed in a strong magnetic field, that moves driven by the Lorentz force.

FED4SAE Support

The NEMS device has been fabricated using CSEM advanced manufacturing/packaging technology platform: an array of submicronic hole is etched in a membrane and flexible beams are created to be able to close each hole individually.

Managing the gas flow is done by controlling currents applied on the beam array, using the STM32 platform. This resulted in realizing and implementing a complete smart management of the inlet gas flows’ control as a function of the sensor signal.

Blumorpho is supporting NanoTech Analysis in building business.

Impact

Gas analysis systems based on the membranes with the small pores are now available but the valves have, however, not demonstrated yet their ability to control the gas flow. Two analysis systems are available and are in almost continuous operation to demonstrate the abilities of the equipment to interested parties.

Simultaneously NanoTech Analysis has been able to build strong partnerships with two important Italian medical research institutions for the launch of two different programs aimed at detecting markers and signatures of specific diseases. The final scope is to realize an innovative scientific instrument able to join the compactness, mobility and high sensitivity resulting from the combination of nano and micro devices defined in the context of this program with more standard analytical techniques.

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