The rapid development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies have brought significant opportunities and challenges. While AI has the potential to revolutionise industries and improve lives, there are growing concerns related to privacy, security, fairness, transparency and the environmental footprint. The Olympics motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" also applies to recent impressive AI advancements, but now is the time to update it to "Lighter, Clearer, Safer". We propose ACHILLES to build an efficient, compliant, and trustworthy AI ecosystem. At its core is an iterative development cycle inspired by clinical trials encompassing four modules. It begins with human-centric methodologies, followed by data-centric operations, model-centric strategies, and deployment-centric optimisations. It returns to human-centric approaches, focusing on explainability and model monitoring. This iterative cycle aims to enhance AI systems' performance, robustness and efficiency while ensuring they comply with the legal requirements and highest ethical standards. Another innovation is the development of an ML-driven Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The ACHILLES IDE will facilitate seamless integration between the iterative cycle's modules, enabling users to develop efficient, compliant, and trustworthy AI solutions more effectively and responsibly. The project aims to significantly impact European AI development, aligning with the region's guidelines and values. Through innovative techniques and methodologies based on the collaboration of a multidisciplinary team of 16 partners from 10 countries, ACHILLES will foster a strong AI ecosystem that respects privacy, security, and ethical principles across various sectors. By validating the results in real use cases (including healthcare, ID verification, content creation and pharmaceuticals), ACHILLES will showcase its practical applicability and potential for widespread adoption.

Co-FACTOR aims at speeding-up the industrial up-take of results of the FoF projects I-Ramp3, ReBORN, SelSus, T-Rex, INTEFIX and Power-OM , whose common topic centers around “smart components”. While the prime focus is on gaining benefit for these projects, the proposed measures also seek to link with program level initiatives in a complementary way. Positioning these projects in the core of a larger cluster set-up involving related initiatives as well as the entire stakeholder panorama of the field, Co-FACTOR pursues the 5 major ambitions: Cooperate: establish close partnership among the core cluster to give better visibility to those high-level performing projects among industry, scientific community and policy makers. Communicate: present and promote as a cluster the involved projects and their approaches and achievements among the full range of potential stakeholders as well as public groups and students. Further, to stimulate coherence among “smart components players”. Converge: leverage the impact of the projects by focusing on the cross-cutting issue „smart components“ and assessing reliable and interoperable solutions and standardization opportunities. Connect: facilitate the immediate or short-term exploitation of project results in industrial settings creating a win-win-situation for the technology „push“ and „pull“ site. Consolidate: analyze remaining bottlenecks for „smart components technology“ deployment to formulate thoughtful recommendations for future actions and political framework programs. Co-FACTOR proposes a set of measures spanning from technology assessment, match making among providers and end-user, propelling last-mile exploitation efforts by innovation management and funding outlook, expert workshops, link to research community and roadmapping to outline future R&D&I needs. These will be part of an extensive dissemination campaign featuring intense and strategic communication, organization of events and profound intra-cluster interaction

streamSAVE will support Member States in harmonizing accurate, bottom-up energy savings calculations of technical priority actions under Article 7, as well as Article 3 of Member States’ EED reporting. The actions will be targeted to those measures with high energy saving potential and considered as priority issues by Member States. To understand Member States’ priorities, the consortium performed an online survey in May 2019 (explained below). For each of the identified priority actions, streamSAVE is fostering transnational knowledge exchange between public authorities and other key-stakeholders along the following axes: - Axis 1: Knowledge facility where Member States are guided through the status of energy saving methodologies in the EU28 and how they can streamline and improve their bottom-up energy savings calculations. - Axis 2: Peer-to-peer dialogues among public authorities and other key-stakeholders to share experiences, reflect on and validate the streamlined calculation methodologies. - Axis 3: Capacity support facility assisting Member States in implementing streamlined energy savings calculations for specific requests to improve their obligations under Article 3 and Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive An online streamSAVE platform will be set-up to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences among Member States according to the three axes, which is illustrated in the next figure. The project would assist Member States to deliver rapidly scalable savings and hence maximize their chances of successfully meeting the EED energy savings targets. Methodologies developed in this way would be eligible for use on a voluntary basis, but would benefit from the pooling of European expertise and experience and thus support best practice while avoiding duplicative effort.

The project aims enhancing cross-sector, international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the area of social robotics technology for care. Are robots ready for society, and is society ready for robots? How can social robots can be included in people’s lives? Robots are increasingly being used in the healthcare sector as a potential solution to the current and future challenges faced by the healthcare sector. Due to the global population ageing, by 2035 the world is projected to lack 12.9 million healthcare professionals (WHO: 2013). Social robots may benefit the quality life and wellbeing of patients, their families and healthcare professionals. Evidence and much of the needed knowledge are still lacking. Strong interdisciplinarity and cross-sectorial research and innovation activity is needed. A knowledge hub for social robotics will be created with a threefold aim: (1) To enhance the competencies of involved staff members, refining and focusing their skills; (2) To build a tri-sectoral network involving academia, industry and users of technology, and (3) to create an enduring network that will outlive the grant funding. The core of the project includes some of the strongest actors in international research, SMEs and user organisations, focusing on three activity lines: technological, sociological, care-and-welfare. To be able to understand the impact of introducing social robots in care, the three areas that will be affected by this technical evolution will be researched: (1) care provided as medical practice; this is the care given to patients in hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centres and other medical facilities. (2) residential care - this area refers to all care institutions accepting patient/clients as residents: elderly homes, nursing homes, special needs schools for children or adults, etc. (3) family care, investigating how social robots can be implemented in the home, and as a part of domestic life.

ECOBOTICS.SEA is a future-oriented 4-year research project with a research-driven human-resources training network in its center. ECOBOTICS.SEA focuses on the research of underwater robotics and biomimetics concepts and technology, targeting problems and needs in the real world that are related to the study of biospheres, species and ecosystems and their preservation. 8 Early-Stage Research Projects (ESRP) compose the research plan. The research to be carried out in these 8 ESRP is organized into 5 scientific work packages. The core of the research activities is constituted by 88 months of secondments within the partner network which are essential for ensuring the required knowledge and know-how transfer between the partners. The partner network is composed by 3 universities and R&D institutes and 3 companies located in European member states, plus 1 R&D in Third Countries. The consortium is highly interdisciplinary, aggregating excellence from various domains, including robotics,biomimetics for water/underwater systems, automation, biology, ecosystem preservation, entrepreneurship and anthropology applied to species preservation. Workshops, summer schools and international conferences serve as complementary measures, not only for further stimulating the exchange of knowledge and providing training, namely to the ESRs, but also for achieving the 4 scientific objectives as specified in the proposal. ECOBOTICS.SEA also incorporates a detailed and well defined career and risk management and training towards application-oriented R&D. Finally, the project is planned to establish an open community that will grow over time and enlarge its impact during and beyond the period of this project, resulting in a lasting, truly international R&D and business network beyond the project’s lifetime.