2030 and beyond, Europe and the world will face opportunities and challenges of growth and sustainability of tremendous magnitude; to pro-actively tackle issues of green deal efficiency, digital inclusion and assurance of health and safety in a post pandemic world will be key. A powerful vision is needed to connect physical, digital, and human worlds, firmly anchored in future wireless technology and architectural research. The Hexa-X vision calls for an x-enabler fabric of connected intelligence, networks of networks, sustainability, global service coverage, extreme experience, and trustworthiness. Wireless technologies are of critical relevance for our society and economy today; their importance for growth will continue to steadily increase with 5G and its evolution, enabling new ecosystems and services motivated by strongly growing traffic and trillions of devices. The Hexa-X project ambition includes to develop key technology enablers in the areas of (i) fundamentally new radio access technologies at high frequencies and high-resolution localization and sensing; (ii) connected intelligence though AI-driven air interface and governance for future networks, and (iii) 6G architectural enablers for network disaggregation and dynamic dependability. Europe has been a leader in wireless network technologies for decades. It is now critical to unleash our best brains in the joint research ambition of a “flagship” project to maintain the global industry leadership for the B5G/6G era. The Hexa-X flagship is a unique effort of vision, and an opportunity for disruptive impact in sustainable growth and technology experience in Europe and worldwide!

Electro-mobility offers a variety of benefits. However, the electrification of road freight transport is not viable by using on-board storage of electricity. The electric roads can solve this problem by providing electrical power to the truck as it is driving through overhead electrical cables. However, the critical problem of electric roads is how to connect the truck, through the pantograph, to the power source. At speeds of 90 km/h, trucks must know the position of the cables 100-150m ahead in order to adjust the pantograph’s position in time to ensure that it correctly engages with the electrical cables. When using current solutions such as Radar, Lidar or Cameras trucks cannot travel at more than 30km/h and even so, often disengage from the cables. This is inefficient, dangerous and can significantly damage the cables. Today there is no technology that can detect and guide a pantograph at high speed and with the accuracy required to effectively charge the truck. At Qamcom Research and Technology AB, we have designed and tested an innovative solution named the Pantograph Active Control System (PACS) that enables fast communication between the energy source and trucks. PACS is composed of two elements: - Communicating devices located on every pole that transmits its position as well the position of the upcoming pole to approaching trucks - A high frequency radar located on top of the truck’s cabin that detects the transponder signals And exhibits the following characteristics: - Modulation of radar signals - Short reading times enabling high speed data transmission - Detection of the geographical position of the data sources PACS has been tested within the e-highway context on an e-highway test strip in Sweden and has shown excellent results. We now what to use the SME instrument to develop the solution alongside truck OEMs and bring PACS to the market. Market estimates predict that by 2024 there will be over 100,000 electric trucks with over 40,000 Km of e-roads

To deliver on our European 6G vision for the 2030s, and to tackle opportunities and challenges of increasing magnitude, e.g., sustainability, trustworthiness, green deal efficiency, digital inclusion, there is need for a flagship project, towards the elaboration of a holistic 6G network platform and system. To fill this need, Hexa-X-II is proposed with the ambition of being this flagship project, and of inspiring the world for digital transformation through novel 6G services. Hexa-X-II will work, beyond enabler-oriented research, to optimized systemization, early validation, and proof-of-concept; work will progress from the 6G key enablers that connect the human, physical, and digital worlds, as explored in Hexa-X, to advanced technology readiness levels, including key aspects of modules / protocols / interfaces / data. Hexa-X II includes: (a) the provision of advanced / refined use cases, services, and requirements, ensuring value for society; (b) the delivery of the 6G platform blueprint, which will encompass enhanced connectivity for 6G services, mechanisms realizing the “networks beyond communications” vision (sensing, computing, trustworthy AI), efficient network management schemes; (c) the realization of extended validation at system and component level; (d) actions for global impact, while assuring strategic autonomy in critical areas for the EU. Europe is starting from the pole position with 6G research and is leading wireless network technologies today. Now is the time to leverage our joint research ambition with a flagship project that will lead the R&D effort towards end-to-end systemization and validation. The Hexa-X-II flagship is a unique effort and a holistic vision, of a 6G system of integrated technology enablers, which accomplish “beyond the sum of the parts”, and of a “network beyond communications” platform for disruptive economic / environmental / societal impact; these are vital for establishing the European 6G technology leadership!

Over the past few years, we have been witnessing an increasing presence and usage of wearable sensing and quantified- self devices. The rise of embedded and wearable computing is expected to bring the next revolution of the Internet of Sports, enhancing fitness, performance health, productivity and safety as well as creating new jobs and opening new markets. Nevertheless, at a European level, there is a recognized shortage of highly skilled researchers, scientists and engineers with transferable skills and entrepreneurial experience, trained in building IT platforms and service infrastructures capable of hosting innovative collective sensing services and applications. The RAIS consortium comprising 6 beneficiaries and 7 fully committed partner organizations, aspires to establish the core for a fertile multidisciplinary research and innovation community with strong entrepreneurial culture that will advance:1) wearable sport-sensing and quantified-self devices and accompanying middleware;2) technologies of Big Data mining and analytics that are needed to capture a broad range of users’ sports- and wellness-related information.The main objective of RAIS is to provide world class training for a next generation of researchers, computer scientists, and data engineers, emphasizing a strong combination of advanced understanding in both theoretical and experimental approaches, methodologies and tools that are required to develop decentralized, scalable, and secure collective sensing infrastructures and platforms. RAIS training network will fund 14 ESRs, 3 workshops, 1 Hackathlon event, 1 entrepreneurship event, 3 summer schools and a final Conference. To meet this goal, RAIS will focus on developing new technologies on Big Data Analytics on the Edge, Data Stream Processing, Distributed and Decentralized Machine Learning, Blockchain as well as Security/Privacy. These topics include important and timely research challenges with an immediate exploitation potential.

SafeCOP (Safe Cooperating Cyber-Physical Systems using Wireless Communication) will establish a safety assurance approach, a platform architecture, and tools for cost-efficient and practical certification of cooperating cyber-physical systems (CO-CPS). SafeCOP targets safety-related CO-CPS characterized by use of wireless communication, multiple stakeholders, dynamic system definitions, and unpredictable operating environments. In this scenario, no single stakeholder has the overall responsibility over the resulted system-of-systems; safe cooperation relies on the wireless communication; and security and privacy are important concerns. Although such CO-CPS can successfully address several societal challenges, and can lead to new applications and new markets, their certification and development is not adequately addressed by existing practices. SafeCOP will provide an approach to the safety assurance of CO-CPS, enabling thus their certification and development. The project will define a platform architecture and will develop methods and tools, which will be used to produce safety assurance evidence needed to certify cooperative functions. SafeCOP will extend current wireless technologies to ensure safe and secure cooperation. SafeCOP will also contribute to new standards and regulations, by providing certification authorities and standardization committees with the scientifically validated solutions needed to craft effective standards extended to also address cooperation and system-of-systems issues. SafeCOP brings clear benefits in terms of cross-domain certification practice and implementations of cooperating systems in all addressed areas: automotive, maritime, healthcare and robotics. The advantages include lower certification costs, increased trustworthiness of wireless communication, better management of increasing complexity, reduced effort for verification and validation, lower total system costs, shorter time to market and increased market share.