CLEVER proposes a series of innovations in the area of hardware accelerators, design stack, and middleware software that revolutionize the ability of edge computing platforms to operate federatedly, leveraging sparse resources that are coordinated to create a powerful swarm of resources. CLEVER technologies will support the deep edge computing paradigm, moving computing services closer to the end user or the source of the data to reduce power consumption, reduce capacity requirements, and latency for mission critical applications. Furthermore, CLEVER will overcome traditional limitations of edge computing in terms of limited resource availability by providing an effective framework for seamless use of federated resources in the edge-cloud continuum. CLEVER will demonstrate processing solutions for AI at the edge through four use cases: (1) digital twin for in-factory optimization, (2) smart agriculture for high yield eco-farms, (3) fully automated material deployment, and (4) augmented reality for shopping sites. Through the achievement of its goals, the CLEVER project will help to position Europe at the forefront of the intelligent edge computing field, enabling growth across many sectors (manufacturing, agriculture, smart environments, augmented reality, and others). By lowering the barriers for utilising edge computing for artificial intelligence applications, CLEVER will open the door for European Industries and SMEs to leverage state of the art technologies, driving their development and growth as leaders in their sectors.

SMARTY invokes a cloud-edge continuum, made from heterogeneous systems, that protects data-in-transit and data-in-process in order to offer a trustful fabric to run AI processes. The securitization occurs by employing novel accelerators for quantum resilient communications, confidential computing, software defined perimeters and swarm formation, offering multiple layers of security. Semantic programmability and graph-management open the door to drag-and-drop approaches in deploying services in a fast and reliable manner. SMARTY is proposed within the context of different key sectors in Europe : automotive, fintech, telco and industrial settings; the technology proposed in SMARTY will be matured within the lifetime of the project and tested through five use cases. SMARTY is supported by large European industry players and well as by 13 SMEs which will seek a visible platform to develop their products and gain visibility towards high-growth. SMARTY’s major suppliers and OEMs and reputable academic partners provide a great opportunity for these 13 SMEs to mature their technologies in a challenging but safe environment. The results of SMARTY are applicable to different vertical sectors and can be transported to different use cases. Strong synergies with existing efforts in the area of edge computing, European processors and trustworthy AI are envisioned and planned within SMARTY.

Quantum Computers are about to be accessible to the public. The ability for Quantum Computers to break classic cryptography protocols is pushing the adoption of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). PQC protocols are resistant against quantum computers. During 2022, and after several years of research, the first standards on PQC will be made available to the public. Although the EU has some scattered activities on PQC, it has not yet addressed the need for PQC experts in application of this emerging technology. This is the driving force for QUARC, a Doctoral Network Industrial Doctorate on PQC, providing interdisciplinary and integral training and research in PQC. QUARC will train 8 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) through an outstanding training program that includes coordinated research in different cryptography areas, focusing on implementation. QUARC is an industrial doctorate, and besides a 50% of their time located in an industrial partner, each DC will be also exposed to a set of training initiatives in the areas of relevance for industry and receive the support of an external advisory board made out of experts in the field. QUARC establishes a well-balances, interdisciplinary, intersectoral and innovative training network, with an overarching theme of quality and edginess: research as a training tool to push the current state-of-the-art in PQC.

At ThinkingEarth, we view the Earth as a complex unified and interconnected system. To harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we use cutting-edge techniques, including deep learning, causality, eXplainable AI, and physics-aware Machine Learning. We leverage the predictive abilities of Self-Supervised Learning and Graph Neural Networks to develop task-agnostic Copernicus Foundation Models and a Graph representation model of the Earth. We demonstrate the potential of these assets through small-scale downstream Spotlight Applications, as well as large-scale use cases that integrate distributed industrial and user non-EO datasets. These use cases address ambitious problems with high socio-environmental impact and new business growth opportunities, such as accelerating Europe's clean energy transition and independence from volatile fossil fuels, understanding Earth's processes by modeling causal Earth system teleconnections, and assessing and modeling the impact of current and future Climate emergency in biodiversity and food security.

CENTRIC proposes to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques through a top-down, modular approach to wireless connectivity that puts the users’ communication needs and environmental constraints at the center of the network stack design. It all starts with the users’ objectives and application-specific requirements. Then, AI techniques are used to create and customize tailor-made waveforms, transceivers, signaling, protocols and RRM procedures to support these requirements. This is the user-centric AI Air Interface (AI-AI) that CENTRIC will enable. To guarantee that CENTRIC’s AI-AI can be implemented in practice, we will also explore and develop innovative hardware computing substrates with realistic and AI-AI-compatible energy-efficiency properties. This includes novel electronics such as neuromorphic computing and mixed analog-digital platforms. CENTRIC will make this possible by advancing theory, algorithms, hardware co-design, and training and monitoring environments based on digital twins. We will focus on providing the desired quality of experience (QoE) to a given user, or type of users, while optimizing spectrum usage, minimizing energy consumption and guaranteeing EMF compliance. The results of CENTRIC will be validated and demonstrated in laboratory prototypes and its breakthroughs will enable future 6G use-cases, such as self-driving vehicles, the internet of nano bio-things, or multi-sensory holographic communications.