eCAP aims to deliver a novel medical device which combines a smart capsule with an e-health platform for better diagnostics, patient empowered disease management and hence, improved outcomes for patients with gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Our project will create a modular and implantable capsule with multi-sensing capacity that enables GI physiology monitoring for a controlled time period, leveraging the minimally invasive surgical approach of flexible endoscopy. eCAP will use a worldwide ubiquitous smartphone communication standard, together with cloud computing technology and application interfaces to integrate, process and interpret longitudinal physiological data collected by the capsule. The digital platform is designed to improve the accuracy and clinical usefulness of standard test data by incorporating patient reported outcome measures. The clinician is able to personalize the test for the patient and receive accurate and meaningful results from this multi-stream data input with interpretation aided by Artificial Intelligence. The universality of the eCAP solution will allow dissemination of advanced GI disease diagnostics to patients and doctors worldwide, including low resource environments. During the project, we will demonstrate eCAP?s clinical value and cost savings using gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a worldwide, common, and extremely costly problem, as a clinical target. Clinical evaluation with health-economics analysis will be conducted in France, Ukraine and Kenya, and a specific education program will be developed to train practitioners to use the novel technology. eCAP builds on several years of R&D by our consortium in the field of implantable capsules for GI disease diagnostics. Its ambition is to facilitate a shift in GI diagnostics from its current unscalable analogue version to a patient centered e-health tool and to make Europe the leader in the rapidly growing field of connected medical devices for remote patient monitoring.

Oxide fibre reinforced ceramics, so-called oxide ceramic matrix composites (O-CMC) have to be considered as strategic materials from now to the future, e.g. for use in next generation aero-engines, stationary gas turbines, power-to-X processes with concentrated solar power CSP, chemical industry, batch carrier for high temperature processes, etc. Today such high-end O-CMC components and the key raw material, the ceramic fibres as reinforcement component, are mainly exclusively produced in the United States. But as these are key components for the European manufacturing, energy and aerospace industry, there is a need to develop a European oxide fibre and O-CMC component industry, decreasing dependence on non-EU producers. The InVECOF project addresses this need and provides a substantial contribution to sustainable product innovation action through the two following key activities: 1. to develop a European oxide ceramic reinforcing fibre equivalent to US fibres and to establish it among end users (ROF fibre) and 2. to develop and validate a next-generation fibre in parallel with improved thermos-mechanical properties (NGO fibre). The ROF fibre will present an equivalent to the dominant 3M Nextel fibres with better availability, without dual-use restrictions from the US and possibly lower price is needed and the NGO fibre will have improved thermo-mechanical properties compared to the benchmark fibres in order to make processes, plants, turbines, etc. more energy efficient through higher application temperatures. The project InVECOF Innovative Value Chains for European Ceramic Oxide Fibres covers the whole process chain beginning from fibre development and production over weaving these fibres to fabrics to O-CMC manufacturing, coupons and demonstrators for every end-user application, up to testing Ox-fibers and O-CMC components in relevant environments with project partners for every step from three countries in Europe.

PROMISE is a consortium that focuses on the application of Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) in diamond quantum technology for imaging. The aim is to guide the development and use of this mature and promising quantum technology, which is known for its ease of operation. PROMISE leads the NV based quantum imaging sensors to the next level of development building widefield magnetometer prototypes to measure relevant samples into operational environments (TRL7) to foster its market uptake. The PROMISE widefield NV magnetometer excels in imaging compared to other technologies by generating magnetic field maps without scanning. This results in a faster acquisition time (orders of magnitude faster than scanning protocols), a wide field of view and increased sensitivity. This speed up in the acquisition is the key to open up its use in a wide range of new applications. The consortium is committed to leveraging the developed NV-based prototypes for a consolidated market uptake by involving relevant partners along the whole value-chain. A unified, compact, affordable and low-consumption benchtop prototype will be designed and developed without impacting performance and functionalities. Machine learning software is being developed to streamline both data acquisition and data analysis, to facilitate for non-quantum expert use of the device and paving the way to automate inspection process. PROMISE also includes expertise that will contribute to standardising designs and methods required for the industry. During the project, four use cases will validate the prototypes, impacting the semiconductor industry, material science, aerospace and biotechnology. The industry, in general, will benefit from a tool that will enable improvements in their devices, materials and production processes, as well as provide a deeper understanding of mechanisms at the atomic level. It will also monitor events and dynamics to enable more accurate predictions and address pressing challenges in various domains.

The HyperImage project will be the first initiative to develop a universal, fast, modular and cost-effective spectral image sensing technology platform suitable for both short- and long-range imaging applications. To achieve that, HyperImage will make use of innovative photonic components including electrically tunable liquid lenses, pixel shifters, fast steering mirrors, and configurable SMD style IR micro-emitter arrays. HyperImage will integrate these components into innovative, high-performance multi- and hyperspectral snapshot and line scan cameras. AI machine learning algorithms will translate spectral image data into relevant functional products properties and detect and classify objects for more accurate decision making e.g. in autonomous driving. The technology platform will be complemented with a cloud-based spectral image analysis platform and reference data repository that enables users to continuously improve image analysis accuracy and prediction models. The HyperImage technology platform will be validated in four industrial use cases: (1) quality control in manufacturing of high power electronics; (2) crop growth monitoring for fully automated vertical farming of salads, herbs and microgreens; (3) spectral image based vision and navigation in off-road autonomous driving; (4) light-weight, high-resolution hyperspectral vision system for unmanned geo-surveillance drones. Based on that, HyperImage will provide European Industry a universal, efficient and reliable solution for object recognition, detailed product and material analysis and reliable quality control in manufacturing. HyperImage solution will lead to strong benefits for the applications such as 10-20% increase yield and reduced cost in manufacturing and vertical farming, 20% fuel saving and up to 40% increased operation speed in autonomous offroad driving; and up to 10% drone weight reduction (25 kg MTOW class) yielding 50% increased flight time through space for a larger battery.

In the context of increasing energy demand, thin film PV technologies contribute in reducing CO2 emission. Current PV technologies are suffering from several issues: 1 – the outsourcing of PV modules outside Europe, 2 – the large distance between consumption points and generating power plants and 3 – the use of agricultural fields by solar power plant. In this context, building applied photovoltaic (BAPV) approach can face these issues by bringing functionalization to facades or roofs with a small constraint on the building. BOOSTER project targets at deploying the OPV technology to the BAPV market. OPV is a technology that addresses the problematic of world energy production with an eco-responsible approach. Manufacturing OPV modules via printing techniques features a low energy-payback-time and uses resources that are abundant, easily accessible and non toxic. Additionally, OPV demonstrates properties (flexibility, lightweight) that make it easily suitable for BAPV. Recently, technology benefited from a rapid progress of performances with development of advanced materials. The project BOOSTER aims at bringing the OPV technology to a TRL 7 by increasing efficiency, lifetime together with optimizing costs and lowering carbon footprint. Two demonstrators will be installed to illustrated BAPV concepts: a “ready to stick module” and a textile integrated product. BOOSTER will provide an efficient multi-layer OPV architecture demonstrating efficiency up to 15 %. Advanced multifunctional barrier films will be manufactured to increase the lifetime to 35 years. With a large-scale production approach, efforts will be placed on scaling up all the materials and optimization of the R2R manufacturing line to coat all the layers with minimization of performance loss while targeting drastic cost reduction. BOOSTER BAPV products will be integrated in two different locations (FAU in Germany, ENI in Italy), where real-life efficiency will be studied during last year of the project.