The European maritime transport policy as well as national governments recognizes the importance of the waterborne transport systems as key elements for general and sustainable growth in Europe. In line with the EU Transport White Paper 30% of road freight over 300 km should shift to other modes such as rail or waterborne transport by 2030, and more than 50 % by 2050. So far, this ambition has failed spectacularly. In the period 1995 to 2016 total freight increased with approximately 30%. The share of road transport in intra-EU ton-km increased, whereas the share of short sea shipping (SSS) dropped. Inland had a slight decrease. Waterborne transport has a great potential to reduce road congestion as well as pollution from the transport sector. When used correctly, it is very energy efficient and new ship types can operate with a combination of electric batteries, fuel cells and, when necessary, highly efficient combustion engines, e.g. powered by LNG. The main objective of AEGIS is to develop a new waterborne transport system for Europe that leverages the benefits of ships and barges while overcoming the conventional problems like dependence on terminals, high transhipment costs, low speed and frequency and low automation in information processing. AEGIS intends to use new innovations from the area of connected and automated transport, including smaller and more flexible vessel types, automated cargo handling, autonomous ships, new cargo units and new digital technologies to regain the position that waterborne traditionally had in cargo transport. Ships are most efficient when the cargo holds are full. AEGIS will look for ways to attract new cargo, inbound as outbound, to waterborne transport. This requires new types of services, new business models and better logistics systems.

THEIA-XR (Making the invisible visible for off-highway machinery by conveying extended reality technologies) aims at improving human-machine interaction in mobile machinery by enhancing user technology fit and extending reality technologies and functionalities. The results will make the invisible visible respectively the non-perceivable perceivable to the human operator, extending the perceivable range of the operator without negatively influencing the performance of the human while controlling the machinery. The project will ensure positive impact of eXtended Reality technologies on the safety, security trustworthiness and societal aspects of the interaction between the machine, the human operator and public/non-users, and furthermore create an XR workplace that enables positive user experiences of self-efficacy and meaningfulness of work. THEIA-XR will leverage a human-centred transdisciplinary and scenario-based co-design methodology with users, stakeholders and multidisciplinary researchers as a fully integrated project team. This methodology serves to collect human requirements and to design, develop and deploy the extended reality technologies for information presentation and interaction in the off-highway domain. The targeted extended reality technologies will enhance conventional human-machine interfaces through multi-modal information and interaction technologies, deploying innovative data visualization methods, force feedback technology and acoustic information. The THEIA-XR approach for improving the human operator tasks by deploying extended reality technologies will be initially validated and tested in three uses cases in the off-highway domain, targeting snow grooming, logistics and construction scenarios, integrating real end-users, public/non-users and real-life data from dedicated industrial environments.

TRISTAN’S overarching aim is to expand, mature and industrialize the European RISC-V ecosystem so that it is able to compete with existing commercial alternatives. This will be achieved by leveraging the Open-Source community to gain in productivity and quality. This goal will be achieved by defining a European strategy for RISC-V based designs including the creation of a repository of industrial quality building blocks to be used for SoC designs in different application domains (e.g. automotive, industrial, etc.). The TRISTAN approach is holistic, covering both electronic design automation tools (EDA) and the full software stack. The broad consortium will expose a large number of engineers to RISC-V technology, which will further encourage adoption. This ecosystem will ensure a European sovereign alternative to existing industrial players. The 3-year project fits in the strategy of the European Commission to support the digital transformation of all economic and societal sectors, and speed up the transition towards a green, climate neutral and digital Europe. This transformation includes the development of new semiconductor components, such as processors, as these are considered of key importance in retaining technological and digital sovereignty and build on significant prior investments in knowledge generation in this domain. Development strategies leveraging public research funding that exploit Open-Source have been shown to boost productivity, increase security, increase transparency, allow better interoperability, reduce cost to companies and consumers, and avoid vendor lock-ins. The TRISTAN consortium is composed of 46 partners from industry (both large industries as well as SMEs), research organizations, universities and RISC-V related industry associations, originating from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Switzerland.

Global environmental issues, social inequality and geopolitical changes will pose numerous problems for our society in the future. To face these new challenges and deal with them, there is a need to understand and appropriately utilize new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and biotechnologies. A-IQ Ready proposes cutting-edge quantum sensing, edge continuum orchestration of AI and distributed collaborative intelligence technologies to implement the vision of intelligent and autonomous ECS for the digital age. Quantum magnetic flux and gyro sensors enable highest sensitivity and accuracy without any need for calibration, offer unmatched properties when used in combination with a magnetic field map. Such a localization system will enhance the timing and accuracy of the autonomous agents and will reduce false alarms or misinformation by means of AI and multi-agent system concepts. As a priority, the communication guidance and decision making of groups of agents need to be based on cutting-edge technologies. Edge continuum orchestration of AI will allow decentralizing the development of applications, while ensuring an optimal use of the available resources. Combined with the quantum sensors, the edge continuum will be equipped with innovative, multi-physical capabilities to sense the environment, generating “slim” but accurate measurements. Distributed intelligence will enable emergent behavior and massive collaboration of multiple agents towards a common goal. By exploring the synergies of these cutting-edge technologies through civil safety and security, digital health, smart logistics for supply chains and propulsion use cases, A-IQ Ready will provide the basis for the digital society in Europe based on values, moving towards the ideal of Society 5.0.