Ever since the cloud-centric service provision started becoming incapable for efficiently supporting the emerging end-user needs, compute functionality has been shifted from the cloud, closer to the edge, or delegated to the user equipment at the far-edge. The resources and computing capabilities residing at those locations have been lately considered to collectively make-up a ‘compute continuum’, albeit its unproven assurance to securely accommodate end-to-end information sharing. The continuum-deployed workloads generate traffic that steers through untrusted HW and SW infrastructure (domains) of continuously changing trust-states. CASTOR develops and evaluates technologies to enable trustworthy continuum-wide communications. It departs from the processing of user-expressed high-level requirements for a continuum service, which are turned-to combinations of security needs and network resource requirements, referred to as CASTOR policies. The policies are subsequently enforced on the continuum HW and SW infrastructure to realise an optimised, trusted communication path delivering innovation-breakthroughs to the so-far unsatisfied need: a) for distributed (composable) attestation of the continuum nodes and subsequent elevation of individual outcomes to an adaptive (to changes) continuum trust quantification; b) for the derivation of the optimal path as a joint computation of the continuum trust properties and resources; c) for continuum infrastructure vendor-agnostic trusted path establishment, seamlessly crossing different administrative domains. The CASTOR will be evaluated in operational environments of 4 use-cases whereby varying types of security/safety-critical information is shared. Project innovations will be exhaustively assessed in 3 diverse application domains utilising the carefully-designed CASTOR testbed core for each case. Our results will provide experimental evidence for the CASTOR's efficiency and feed the incomplete trust-relevant (IETF) standards.

Challenges presented by aircraft electric propulsion requires the development of new airborne technologies that enable expanding the electrification technology trend already impacting other areas, like ground transportation or the autonomous generation/usage of electricity from renewables, to efficient and economical air transportation. Those intended technologies must be capable of producing a highly efficient, lightweight, and compact aircraft electrical system that can supply the electric power for propulsion as well as for other uses while keeping electromagnetic emissions under safe limits compatible with airborne equipment operation and human safety. In addition, they shall control heat up of the system by enhanced thermal dissipation through a proper thermal management system. With this aim, EASIER will bring together a multidisciplinary team in order to achieve the following objectives: 1. Investigating EMI filtering solutions with less volume and weight. 2. Investigating EWIS technologies with less radiated EMI, less volume and lower weight. 3. Improved heat transfer from electrical systems to the aircraft exterior. 4. Optimization of the integration of electrical systems with significant mutual impact. 5. Engagement with airframers and regulatory agencies. 6. System trade-off analysis and technology identification. 7. Roadmapping of hybrid/electric aircraft key enabling technologies in terms of EMI and thermal management. To achieve the objectives a strong partnership is established among all members of the EASIER consortium from EU and US who will collaborate following a coordinated plan, with the Industrial Advisory Board and other consortium(s) executing areas 1-3 from the call.

Emerging U-Space and UAM concepts envisage a new generation of small, highly manoeuvrable, and highly automated aircraft operating at low altitude, alongside existing helicopter and general aviation users. Coordination & deconfliction of large numbers of such aircraft operating in primarily urban environments requires new Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) infrastructure to ensure safety of passengers, the public, and other stakeholders while supporting complex low-altitude operations. Leveraging the scalable waveforms of 5G New Radio (NR), modern IP-based software-defined networking, and distributed computing capabilities, ANTENNAE (dAta driveN cosT-Effective 5G iNtegrated CommuNication, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS)-as-A-ServicE) proposes a flexible and resilient integrated CNS-as-a-Service model supporting both low-altitude piloted and U-Space operations, and builds upon the mature and growing family of 3GPP 5G standards including system architecture, deployment models, and commercial implementations. ANTENNAE will apply advanced modelling to validate the applicability of 3GPP standards to deliver low-altitude CNS functions, including the full range of aeronautical data services (through 5G eMBB & URLLC), navigation (through 5G-based A-PNT), and surveillance (through emerging A-SUR and joint communication & sensing (JCS) concepts). ANTENNAE will examine the architectural benefits of established 5G deployment models for providing distributed data services, network resilience, and scalability. ANTENNAE will also look to the future of the 3GPP standards by examining technologies under development in the 3GPP working groups for beyond 5G ("6G”) services. Finally, ANTENNAE will conduct a rigorous quantitative techno-economic analysis informed by these engineering models to assess the financial feasibility of deploying a scalable integrated CNS-as-a-Service through a 5G access network, with comparison to alternative technological approaches.

Human robot collaboration (HRC) has evolved to address the need for flexible production, presenting however drawbacks such as: Inability to cover all applications, Low performance/quality of collaboration and Complexity. SHERLOCK aims to introduce the latest safe robotic technologies in production environments, enhancing them with smart mechatronics and AI based cognition, creating efficient HRC stations that are designed to be safe and guarantee the acceptance/wellbeing of operators. SHERLOCK’s objectives are driven by production requirements involving: 1. Soft Robotics Collaborative Production Station: Starting from a human safety basis: - AURA a high payload collaborative manipulator - Smart exoskeletons with adjustable operation - Safe mobile dual arm manipulators 2. Human - centred interaction, collaboration and awareness by developing - Interfaces inspiring trust/familiarity, allowing seamless HR interaction - Methods for assessing user impact of HRC systems - Design principles/standards to maintain operator psychological safety/wellbeing in HRC - Production setups for people with special restrictions exploiting the robot’s cognition 3. AI enabled cognition for autonomous HRC applications: enabling robots to understand their environment, reason over it and adapt by: -Multi-level perception for process and environment assessment - Safe workspace monitoring systems - Autonomous planning and coordination of human robot tasks - Interactive learning, adapting to operator and simplifying teaching of new tasks 4. Modules for design and certification of Safe HRC applications: - Automated Risk Assessment tools within design/simulation packages - VR/AR tools for validating collaborative operations - reducing certification time - Software tools for Formal on-line safety assessment - AR/VR training methods specialized for HRC SHERLOCK will demonstrate its result in 4 sectors: elevators, industrial modules, aeronautics structures and machine tools production.

Intelligent Energy Europe expects district heating to double its share of the European heat market by 2020 while district cooling will grow to 25%. While this expansion will translate into 2.6% reduction in the European primary energy need and 9.3% of all carbon emissions, it will not be achieved through modernization and expansion alone but requires fundamental technological innovation to make the next generation of district heating and cooling (DHC) systems highly efficient and cost effective to design, operate and maintain. E2District aims to develop, deploy, and demonstrate a novel cloud enabled management framework for DHC systems, which will deliver compound energy cost savings of 30% through development of a District Simulation Platform to optimise DHC asset configuration targeting >5% energy reduction, development of intelligent adaptive DHC control and optimisation methods targeting an energy cost reduction between 10 and 20%, including flexible production, storage and demand assets, and system-level fault detection and diagnostics, development of behaviour analytics and prosumer engagement tools to keep the end user in the loop, targeting overall energy savings of 5%. Development of a flexible District Operation System for the efficient, replicable and scalable deployment of DHC monitoring, intelligent control, FDD and prosumer engagement, development of novel business models for DHC Operators, Integrators and Designers, validation, evaluation, and demonstration of the E2District platform, and development of strong and rigorous dissemination, exploitation and path-to-market strategies to ensure project outcomes are communicated to all DHC stakeholders. E2District addresses specifically the call’s objective related to the development of optimisation, control, metering, planning and modelling tools including consumer engagement and behaviour analytics and supports the integration of multiple generation sources, including renewable energy and storage.