RobotUnion will discover, support and fund 20 European Superstar Scaleups confirmed by top VC investors and global corporates of 4 new market domains for robotics: manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and civil infrastructure. 40 companies developing research will be selected out of a pan-European deal flow of 300 Scaleups through 2 Open Calls. The top 20 will join an acceleration program that will help them progress from TRL4 to TRL7 onwards. This 2 up to 16-months program will provide them with technical and non-technical support services: • Ph-D in residence type of service (the so-called Technical Mentors and Researchers-in-Residence will provide access to knowledge in abilities such as configurability, adaptability, motion, manipulation, decisional autonomy, dependability, interaction, perception, and cognitive ability) • Entrepreneur-in-residence type of support (provided by a pool of world-class training and high-level business mentoring complemented by fundraising mentors) • A voucher scheme to provide access to facilities and technical services across Europe • Up to €200K of free-equity funding for the best-in-class companies. 8 best-in-class companies will start a fundraising campaign led by the VCs and platforms in the consortium leveraging the €8M of public funding with additional €8M of private investment. To this end RobotUnion counts on 5 premier-class RTOs specialized in Robotics at European Level to provide technical support; 4 corporates enabling access to new markets: MADE in Manufacturing, ARLA food in Agri-food, FENIN in Healthcare and FERROVIAL in Infrastructure; CHRYSALIX and ODENSE S&V, as VCs of references in robotics, to lead the fundraising campaigns. Business support partners are FMWC (dissemination), FBA (open call management), ISDI (business acceleration) and BLM (fundraising and access to corporates). RobotUnion will help demonstrate how Europe can lead disruption around Robotics and turn the EU into the EU of entrepreneurial states

It is demonstrated that Nature Based Solutions (NBS) efficiently and effectively contribute to climate adaptation. However NBS need to be adapted locally and to be coherently chosen in order to assure sustainability and “no side effects”. To achieve this, ARCADIA will mobilise 8 European regions and communities – from Italy, Croatia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia - to accelerate NBS adoption and assist them in accessing up-to-date, evidence-based actionable knowledge, guidance, knowledge-intense tools and services, mutual learning and networking opportunities. The project will foster enabling conditions to accelerate regeneration using NBS, by analysing individual and socially determined perceptions of risks and solutions, and experimentally designing incentives and behavioural nudges fostering social acceptance and community actions. In ARCADIA, the definition of regional ambitions and of methodologies and approaches co-developed at consortium level, will be followed by the implementation of 15 co-innovation labs with the engagement of the interested communities and societal partners; the learning across policy areas will be exploited to up-scale and deploy at large scale the solutions in the regions, developing robust policy and economic tools (regulations, funding schemes, business models, investment tools). Strategic objectives of the proposal are: 1. Co-design regional strategies to accelerate transformative adaptation, building upon and mainstreaming innovative, actionable NBS with demonstrated feasibility, effectiveness and social value 2. Assist and empower communities, public administrations and businesses 3. Stimulate collaborative knowledge building and transfer, developing capacities and capabilities 4. Promote coherence and exploit synergies, value and production chains, and public and private spheres of business innovation 5. Advance EU research & innovation agenda on NBS and EU Mission Adaptation.

RECONECT aims to contribute to European reference framework on Nature Based Solutions (NBS) by demonstrating, referencing and upscaling large scale NBS and by stimulating a new culture for 'land use planning' that links the reduction of risks with local and regional development objectives in a sustainable way. To do that, RECONECT draws upon the network of carefully selected Demonstrators and Collaborators that cover a range of local conditions, geographic characteristics, governance structures and social/cultural settings to successfully upscale NBS throughout Europe and Internationally. The RECONECT consortium is a transdisciplinary partnership between researchers, industry partners (SMEs and large consultancies) and responsible agencies at the local and watershed/regional level dedicated to achieve the desired outcomes of the project.