OPEN CALL 2

Deadline: Dec 15, 2020  
CALL EXPIRED

Open Call 2 GENERAL INFORMATION: 

Open date: 22nd September, 2020 
Close date: 15th December (5pm, CET) 
Call acceptance: February, 2021 
Call identifier: DigiFed02 call 
Proposal language: English 

Two tracks: Application Experiments and Digital Challenges

APPLICATION EXPERIMENTS

Application Experiments (AEs) are the core activity of DigiFed. This pathway directly supports SMEs and Midcaps with different levels of digital maturity:

• For SMEs with low digital maturity it offers the capacity for SMEs to catch up and upgrade their skills and existing products with dedicated services, tools and solutions.
• For SMEs with higher digital maturity it offers further innovative technology integration as well as access to potential customers including larger industrial stakeholders.

Application Experiments have been proven to be successful by several projects especially in I4MS and SAE initiatives (on which DigiFed is built). DigiFed will continue such successful practices and amplify their potential by also supporting direct collaboration between SMEs.

DIGITAL CHALLENGE

Digital Challenge is a match funding opportunity where advanced digital technology SMEs are selected through an open call to solve industry challenges set by corporate businesses.

The purpose of the Digital Challenge is to highlight attractive market needs to be addressed through CPS and embedded systems and for which new solutions are required.

DigiFed will be working with large European organisations, he Digital Challenge Owners, who will serve as early adopters of the accelerated innovations and provide additional support to the programme in the form of co-funding, access to innovation support and pilot sites.

APPLICATION EXPERIMENT

Open call for Application Experiment (AE): DigiFed offers grants of up to € 55k as well as technical and business support for the development of smart applications in Europe.

If you are:

• Developing novel and innovative smart solutions worthy of market leaders.
• Bridging the physical and virtual worlds with advanced technologies and industrialized solutions.
• Interested in using premium resources and competencies to speed up development.
• Wishing to access a unique European ecosystem composed of: leading industrial companies, world-class research organizations, innovation accelerators and private investors.

DigiFed offers you:

• Access to industrial platforms in the domain of cyber-physical and embedded systems (CPS).
• Product support aimed at bringing your innovations to target markets.
• Up to € 55k in funding – representing 70% of your project’s declared budget.
• Added value to your product through the usage of high-level technical expertise pooled from research centres across Europe.
• Innovation management support focusing on sustainable business development – to help your innovation get to the market via DigiFed and the Smart Anything Everywhere ecosystem.
• Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) services to identify technical partners, commercial opportunities in Europe and receive tailored help, webinars and boot camps through the DigiFed project. 

DigiFed is open to proposals including, but not limited to, following fields:

• CPS / Embedded systems
• Smart applications
• Artificial Intelligence
• Connectivity/IoT
• Additive manufacturing
• Application-specific semiconductor technologies
• Heterogeneous integration and smart miniaturized systems
• Micro and nano bio-systems
• The energy efficiency of systems

Proposals shall be pan-European (EU member states or H2020 associated countries), encouraging cross-border collaboration:

• With partners/technologies facilitated by the DigiFed team
• With a techno supplier or a customer (SME/RTO/Midcap/LE in Europe) of your choice.

If you have a promising innovative idea, we will help you to bring it to the market – do not miss this opportunity and apply to the open call to realize your innovative solution! Register at our portal and contact one of our networking/DIH partners who will promptly assist you in proposal development. We will also match you with an appropriate advanced or industrial platform that best suits your needs!

Call Information

Call deadline: 15th December 2020, 17:00 (Brussels Time)
Call acceptance: 10th February 2021
Call identifier: DigiFed02 call
Proposal language: English
For further information please contact: info@digifed.org
For registration & upload: click here

Related documents

• The call text can be downloaded here: call text.
• The template for the proposal description is here: proposal template.
• Guide for applicants: download as pdf.
• Video pitch preparation guide: click here.
• FAQ page: click here.
• The standard application experiment agreement is here: pdf or docx.

Important DigiFed process guidance, rules, offered technologies and platforms can be found at www.digifed.org and in our Guide for Applicants.

Through open calls, DigiFed provides:

• a unique marketplace organized as a one-stop-shop with access to leading-edge industrial platforms and several advanced technologies
• support through expertise, know-how, coaching, design support and tech transfer from our partners or DIH services.

DigiFed welcomes proposals addressing any smart application domain targeting:

• CPS Software-intensive project:  Building a system solution using existing programmable CPS software core platforms. The expected outcome of this kind of experiment is a SW prototype demonstrator running on a pre-identified platform (e.g. from DigiFed partner or external stakeholders). 
• System integration project: Building a system solution using existing SW and HW components. This kind of AE requires access to a broad range of competencies (product technical experts, design kits, API, etc.). The expected outcome of this kind of experiment is an integrated system prototype demonstrator. 

DigiFed offers several different leading-edge platforms and DIHs services:

Technology:

• AVL (Austria): Integrated and Open Development Platform.
• Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary): LEDSBESMART platform and Versatile Reliability Tester
• CEA (France): Access to SECURE infrastructure for trusted IoT platform, establishing an environment to isolate trusted code executed or data manipulation by an IoT platform from an untrusted world
• Digital Catapult (UK): Access Future Network Lab supports, including a variety of IoT network technologies under one roof including LoRaWAN, SigFox, NB-IoT and LTE-M as well as 5G2
• Ikerlan (Spain): Ikerlan Konnekt solutions (industrial cybersecurity, dependable embedded systems, I&C technologies, HW & communication systems)
• Ljubljana University (Slovenia): Cloud DevOp; Electrical switch with Ethereum support; Designing effective digital solutions with stakeholders; IoT solutions design & prototyping; Big Data Analytics tool
• STMicroelectronics (France): STM32 PU & STM32 CMU enabling innovation applications for Smart industry, smart city, smart home and smart things
• STMicroelectronics (Italy): Physical digital transformation support with hardware & software tools for fast prototyping.

Innovation Management:

• Blumorpho (France): Support in go to market strategy & innovation management; access to further funding and relevant training to attract private investors. 
• Digital Catapult (UK): Innovation support (technical, business, open innovation) and training events. 
• Ljubljana University (Slovenia): Designing effective digital solutions with stakeholders (SEROI+ methodology) 
• Minalogic (France): Five level of services on (I) Strategy positioning, (II) R&D innovation process, (III) Business development, (IV) Finance access and (V) Skills and training capacity building. 
• Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum (Germany): Development of Innovation strategies, especially in SMEs; Aid for the internationalisation as well as support for EU funding and projects  

Application Experiments can run from 9 to 12 months but must be completed by 12.31.2022. The expected outcome of our Application Experiments is a demonstrator prototype with a high technology readiness level (TRL). The prototype may also be used as a first-generation product.

DigiFed targets ‘small’ companies (start-ups, small/medium enterprises and midcaps), including organisations with both, low and high digital maturity.

Interested start-ups, SMEs and mid-Caps from EU member states and H2020 associated countries are encouraged to review the offered platforms, technologies and testbeds at www.digifed.org and contact our project members to gather further details. Additionally, several boot camps are offered by the DIHs in order to support the applicants.
UK companies are eligible to participate to DigiFed open calls and to receive DigiFed grant.

DIGITAL CHALLENGES

This page is under construction.

Open call for Digital Challenge – DigiFed and European enterprises are looking for StartUps and SMEs who are ready to:

• respond to digital challenges for which NO Cyber Physical Systems or embedded systems solutions have been identified in the market
• collaborate with large organisations to prototype potential solutions

DigiFed and Digital Challenge Owners offer grants of up to € 110k as well as technical and business support for the development of smart applications in Europe.

DIGIFED AND THE DIGITAL CHALLENGE OWNERS OFFER YOU:

• The opportunity to respond to a real-world industry challenge adding a relevant use case to your unique value proposition.
• Up to €110k in funding – representing 70% of your project’s declared budget.
• Added value to your product, through high-level technical expertise, innovation support and access to pilot sites to deploy your solution
• If the pilot project is successful, opportunity to bid to implement the full solution for the Digital Challenge Owner
• Innovation management support focusing on sustainable business development – to help your innovation get to the market via DigiFed and the Smart Anything Everywhere ecosystem.
• Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) services to identify technical partners, commercial opportunities in Europe and receive tailored help, webinars and boot camps through the DigiFed project.

IF YOU ARE:

• Developing innovative smart solutions worthy of market leaders.
• Bridging the physical and virtual worlds with advanced technologies and industrialized solutions.
• Interested in using premium resources and competencies to speed up solutions development.
• Wishing to access a unique European ecosystem composed of leading industrial companies, world-class research organizations, innovation accelerators and private investors.

DIGIFED IS OPEN TO PROPOSALS FOR THE FOLLOWING DIGITAL CHALLENGE:

Build an AIOT System of Systems (GE Hydro France) – GE

Funding: 110k

GE Hydro France is looking for solutions to Build an AIOT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) system of systems.

GE Hydro are looking for mature companies, comfortable with IIOT/Artificial Intelligence/Tiny Machine Learning & Arduino with strong knowledge in embedded devices /electronics and libraries building to help them achieve a promise that the component will share its Health condition. In this challenge, GE Hydro expects an industrialized solution on a specific chosen GE use-case to accelerate their developments with external skilled resources. If the experience is a success, GE Hydro France will pursue on other asset types.

Proposals shall be pan-European (EU member states or H2020 associated countries, including the UK) where applicants:

• Have existing Customer experience or ideally, successfully taken a product or a service from TRL 3 to TRL 8
• Will be using an agile approach during the development and work closely with the Digital Challenge Owner to deliver the proposed solution

If you have a promising innovative idea which responds to the proposed digital challenge, we will help you to bring it to the market – do not miss this opportunity and apply to the open call!

To apply to the GE Digital Challenge register to the DigiFed portal and contact: Orlane Gimenex (orlane.gimemez@minalogic.com) or info@digifed.org.

Application Process Timeline

• 27th October: Submit your pre-selection form (link to the form)
• 6th November: Submit the signed NDA (link to the template)
• 9th November: pre-selection complete, NDA forms submission confirmed, invitations to the digital challenge focused webinars sent
• 9th November – 16th November: opportunity to discuss with the Digital Challenge Owners
• 15th December (5pm, CET): OPEN CALL 2 CLOSED
• January: Proposals selection and evaluation & EC validation
• February: official notification to all participants

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

The interested parties will need to follow the two-stage application process and submit a signed non-disclosure agreement before engaging with the Digital Challenge Owners.

APPLICATION DOCUMENTATION PACK

• pre-selection form (soon)
• NDA template (soon)
• Proposal application template (soon)
• Guide for applicants (soon)
• Video pitch preparation guide

OTHER INFORMATION:

• Digital Challenge (soon)
• DIGITAL CHALLENGES (soon)
• The Standard Digital Challenge Agreement (soon)
• FAQ page (soon)
• Webinars

WHAT NEXT

If you are interested in applying, and want to know more about the Digital Challenge, please register for our dedicated Webinar on the 1st October, 2020.

REGISTRATION AND APPLICATION SUBMISSION

• Registration (soon)
• Pre-selection form submission (soon)
• NDA submission (soon)
• Final application submission (soon)