European coordination in smart-systems research
5 September 2006 Smart systems
based on microtechnology and nanotechnology hold great promise for future
systems integration, with a variety of potential applications especially in
medicine, automotive safety and aeronautics. However, lack of coordination
among European research institutions, industry and government means that
research and product innovation are not advancing as fast as they could.
 The European
Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST)-sponsored EraPilot
project is working to improve coordination among the various players
involved in European smart-systems research. It aims to develop new policy
support tools, models and formats to boost interdisciplinary research and
innovative design in these systems. "We want to bring more cohesion into
European policies for smart systems research at the various administrative
levels, so that research turns into innovative products faster," says
project coordinator Wolfgang Gessner of VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik in
Berlin. Better coordination will allow European research to attain a more
European scale, he says. Potential for miniature-scale integration
Microtechnology (with features near one micrometer) and nanotechnology (tens
of thousands of times finer than a human hair) have the potential to
integrate optical, electronic and mechanical functions on a miniature scale
for a wide range of applications. "Smart microsystems are
already used in automotive braking systems and medical equipment," says
Gessner. "Future systems will be able to diagnose complex situations and
help humans make decisions. For example, driver-status monitoring systems
could help prevent accidents." In aircraft, "Smart systems will increase
power efficiency and reduce emissions," says Gessner. "In the healthcare
sector, they will open up new possibilities for personalised health
monitoring of patients outside the hospital, long-distance surgery, and
integrated delivery of care at home." In healthcare, smart systems will open
up to personalised health monitoring. Facing differing rules and
requirements The possibilities are impressive, but to ensure a leading
role for European industry in this field, efficiency needs to be improved
within the various European structures, stresses Gessner. Companies and
organisations that want to participate in research projects can face very
different rules and requirements for regional, national, and Commission
research projects, he says. Compounding these differences is a free-for-all
competition for research money. "The result is that there is confusion,"
says Gessner. EraPilot is consulting European industry representatives to
define industry requirements for future research in Europe. "We call this a
road-mapping process for technology priorities," says Gessner. The
project, which began in July 2005 and ends in July 2007, is a Coordination
Action, so its main goal is to bring key people and groups together to
improve support for research and design activities. The partners include
programme management agencies from a number of EU countries, as well as the
EUREKA initiatives Eurimus and Pidea. "These organisations manage public
R&D programmes and initiatives and assist governmental authorities in
designing policies in this sector. The EraPilot project aims to intensify
their communication and suggest concerted policy approaches," explains
Gessner. The EraPilot partners had themselves to coordinate with another
European initiative with similar goals. Originally named ERA Pilot MiNa TSI,
the project renamed itself to EraPilot Smart Systems Integration to reflect
its link with the European Technology Platform on Smart Systems Integration
(EpoSS). "It was clear that this technology platform was crucial for the
success of EraPilot,” says Gessner. With EPoSS, EraPilot jointly published a
Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) in July 2006. Future research paths
"This is an important milestone for the project. We haven't finished working
out the cohesion part of our mission yet. But we do have the SRA in hand
now, which is an indispensable basis for our project's future activities,
since it lays out the future paths of research on smart systems
integration," he says. EraPilot is now working out the details of an
expected merger for two overlapping EUREKA clusters, Eurimus and Pidea.
Gessner adds, “This is a major step toward better cohesion among the
research organisations. The efficiency gained will be a great thing, a step
forward for smart systems research."
Source: IST Results Link
EraPilot project:
www.era-pilot.org/public/objectives
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