Support to digital innovation in Emilia-Romagna

In particular ART-ER-DIH:

  • supports Regional Authority in the definition of the Data Economy Regional Strategic Programme;
  • coordinates, supports, and is founding member of the High Technology Network
  • coordinates the Clust-ER activity;
  • is responsible of  the training of PIDs (Digital Entreprise Points) in Emilia-Romagna, born from the National Plan for Industry 4.0;
  • acts in its role of founder and Board of Directors Member of Associazione Big Data;
  • acts as founder and strategic board member of BI-REX (National Competence Centre);
  • leads the Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Interface TSSP Industrial Modernisation Thematic Area;
  • acts as member of the Strategic Forum for Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) established by DG Grow ;
  • organizes R2B events aimed at linking smes to scientific and technical research from the local universities and RTO’s, the most relevant being the annual R2B event

 

The setup and coordination of the High Technology Network

Boasting both a national and international dimension but firmly rooted in the region and its economic system, the Emilia-Romagna High-Technology Network is already capable of effectively and professionally addressing business sector needs. The Network is composed of 82 Industrial research laboratories and 14 Innovation centres operating in the following fields: agri-food, construction, energy and environment, ICT and design, life science, mechanics and materials. The laboratories are hosted within the Technopoles: 10 infrastructures located throughout the territory that stem from an initiative of the Region in collaboration with ART-ER, universities, research centres and local authorities. They organize activities and services for industrial research, technology transfer and for the development of high skills and careers on innovation.

Technopoles have been recognized by the European Commission as best practice of European Funds use in the programming period 2007-2013.

The INCLUSIVE project

ART-ER has been a partner of the INCLUSIVE project, funded under H2020-FoF framework, which aimed at developing a new concept of interaction between the user and a manufacturing system in which the behavior of the automation system adapts to human operator capabilities, making use of the knowledge coming from ICT laboratories, universities and RTOs. ART-ER was in charge of innovation related activities, supporting the industrial exploitation of project results applied to 3 use cases in 3 companies working in different sectors:

production of woodworking machines  for small companies and artisan shops;
development and production of robotic cells for panel bending;
development and production of automated guided vehicles for logistics and automatic material handling in production and storage environment.

The Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Interface Thematic Area

Emilia-Romagna Region is leader of the thematic Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Interface (link) of the Industrial Modernisation Thematic Smart Specialisation Platform. ART-ER represents the Region in all the levels of Governance of the partnership, and has been responsible foir the submission of the proposal, that has been prepared working with a regional group of experts from academies, companies, RTO’s and SMEs. Officially started in May May 2018, each Region of the partnership went through a fine mapping of needs from the industrial world, facilities from labs and knowledge from academic research. From these strong mapping activity, innovation projects growing-up, merging needs, facilities and knowledge from all the Regions.