The proposed research effort provides methods for a faster and more efficient development process of safety- or operation-critical cyber-physical systems in (partially) unknown environments. Cyber-physical systems are very hard to control and verify because of the mix of discrete dynamics (originating from computing elements) and continuous dynamics (originating from physical elements). We present completely new methods for de-verticalisation of the development processes by a generic and holistic approach towards reliable cyber-physical systems development with formal guarantees. In order to guarantee that specifications are met in unknown environments and in unanticipated situations, we synthesise and verify controllers on-the-fly during system execution. This requires to unify control and verification approaches, which were previously considered separately by developers. For instance, each action of an automated car (e.g. lane change) is verified before execution, guaranteeing safety of the passengers. We will develop completely new methods, which are integrated in tools for modelling, control design, verification, and code generation that will leverage the development towards reliable and at the same time open cyber-physical systems. Our approach leverages future certification needs of open and critical cyber-physical systems. The impact of this project is far-reaching and long-term: UnCoVerCPS prepares the EU to be able to develop critical cyber-physical systems that can only be realised and certified when uncertainties in the environment are adequately considered. This is demonstrated by applying our ground-breaking methods to automated vehicles, human-robot collaborative manufacturing, and smart grids within a consortium that has a balanced participation of academic and industrial partners.

The objective of ESMERA is to support EU SMEs in materializing, testing and promoting robotic technologies through: - Providing industrial challenges defined by key EU companies, stimulating SMEs to compete by developing and promoting new technologies that address real life problems and thus already have a market - Engaging a number of Competence Centres (CCs) that can provide an easily accessible environment for developing, evaluating, testing, and demonstrating novel robotic technologies. - Offering direct financial support through a cascade funding mechanism to supplement the technical excellence offered by the CCs, allowing prototype/product creation and promotion - Offering mentoring and support in developing business cases and managing the complete chain from “idea to market product” by EU champions in robotics that have successfully undergone the process To achieve these objectives ESMERA involves 4 renowned robotics CCs (LMS, CEA, TUM, TEKNIKER) and 3 industrial partners/ facilitators (R U Robots, Blue Ocean Robotics, COMAU) who are at the forefront of EU robotics technology development. The project aspires to realize research experiments in two phases: - Phase 1 – Proof of concept: Carrying out 32 experiments organized in 2 Groups competing under 8 different challenges from 4 industrial sectors (energy, manufacturing, agri-food, construction). CCs will be supporting development activities with technical expertise and access to their state of the art facilities and equipment. - Phase 2 - Industrial Leadership and Business Support: Selecting 16 Challenge winners and providing further means for industrialization and commercialization of their solutions. Further RTD support by the centres and mentoring on business models and market outreach by the project facilitators. Taking lessons from challenges ran all over the world, we expect this approach will have a major impact on economy in EU regions on employment, market, businesses, skills and competitiveness.

The development of robotic assistants is being held back by the lack of a coherent and credible safety framework. Consequently, robotic assistant applications are confined either to research labs or, in practice, to scenarios where physical interaction with humans is purposely limited, e.g. surveillance, transport or entertainment (e.g. museums). In the domestic/personal domain, however, interactions take place in an informal, unstructured, and typically highly complex way. Even in more constrained industrial settings, the need for reduced manufacturing costs is motivating the creation of robots capable of much greater flexibility and intelligence. These robots need to work near to, be taught by, and perhaps even interact physically with, human co-workers. So, how can we enhance robots so that they can participate in sophisticated interactions with humans in a safe and trustworthy manner? This is a fundamental research question that must be addressed before the traditional physical safety barrier between the robot and the human can be removed, which is essential for close-proximity human-robot interactions. How, then, might we establish such safety arguments? Intrinsically safe robots must incorporate safety at all levels (mechanical; control; and human interaction). There has been some work on safety at lower, mechanical, levels to severely restrict movements near humans, without regard to whether the movements are "safe" or not. Crucially, no one has yet tackled the high-level behaviours of robotic assistants during interaction with humans, i.e. not only whether the robot makes safe moves, but whether it knowingly or deliberately makes unsafe moves. This is the focus of our project. Formal verification exhaustively analyses all of the robot's possible choices, but uses a vastly simplified environmental model. Simulation-based testing of robot-human interactions can be carried out in a fast, directed way and involves a much more realistic environmental model, but is essentially selective and does not take into account true human interaction. Formative user evaluation provides exactly this validation, constructing a comprehensive analysis from the human participant's point of view. It is the aim of our project to bring these three approaches together to tackle the holistic analysis of safety in human-robot interactions. This will require significant research in enhancing each of the, very distinct, approaches so they can work together and subsequently be applied in realistic human-robot scenarios. This has not previously been achieved. Developing strong links between the techniques, for example through formal assertions and interaction hypotheses, together with extension of the basic techniques to cope with practical robotics, is the core part of our research. Though non-trivial to achieve, this combined approach will be very powerful. Not only will analysis from one technique stimulate new explorations for the others, but each distinct technique actually remedies some of the deficiencies of another. Thus, this combination provides a new, strong, comprehensive, end-to-end verification and validation method for assessing safety in human-robot interactions.