RIMA 1st Open Call (September 2019)

Deadline: Dec 19, 2019  
CALL EXPIRED

● I GENERAL OVERVIEW
1 Overview and summary of the Open Call

Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) represents a huge economic activity (450 Bn€ market) spanning across sectors such as energy, transport and civil engineering. EU hosts over 50% of I&M robotics offer but there is a bottleneck connecting it to the market and high potential applications. RIMA is a 4-year project aiming to establish a network of 13 Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) on robotics sharing best practices and providing services to facilitate uptake of I&M technologies.

Our challenge is to reinforce this connection and to provide education and training on robotics I&M and to connect the value chain - research, technology companies, service providers, end users and investors - for accelerating economic growth in the field:

- building upon the network pioneered by SPRINT Robotics extending it to all relevant sectors across the value chain;

- encompassing network:

• ●  leading research organizations supporting one DIH per region aligned with regional policies and industry sectors,

• ●  sectorial associations that will make a bridge with end users and industries;

  - offering the key services to achieve acceleration including support to testing and technology transfer, coaching and training on robotics for I&M, identification of tracks to optimize processes and communication;

  - advising on funding opportunities relying on the S3 Thematic Platform on robotics for I&M federating the common ambition of EU-13 regions;

  - ensuring network sustainability by adopting the SPRINT business model.

  In two Open Calls, in 2019 and 2020, RIMA will select 50 experiments among which there will be 15 Technology Transfer Experiments 1 & 35 Technology Demonstrators. Start-ups that are small & medium-sized companies (SMEs) or slightly bigger companies can apply. A total of €8.1M funding will be distributed to support these experiments during the project.

  Successful candidates will receive equity-free funding to conduct their experiments. In addition, they will get access to acceleration services e.g. training, business mentoring and technical support from RIMA network.

1.1 Why should you apply to this call?

There are several good reasons why SMEs or slightly bigger companies should apply to the 1st call:

• ●  if you are a Technology Developer you have the opportunity to bring your innovative technology closer to the market (from TRL 5 to 7),

• ●  if you are a Services/Product Provider in the field of Inspection and Maintenance for Infrastructures you can develop new products or services or to innovate the existing ones,

• ●  if you are a System Integrator you have the opportunity to enlarge your application field,

1 All terms are defined in the Glossary that is at the end of the document.

5

D5.1 Open Call 1 Package of Documents (RIMA 1st Open Call September 2019)

• ●  as a micro-consortium you can receive financial support up to € 300K for innovative proposals,

• ●  you can find complementary companies among Technology Developers, Service/Product Providers and

  System Integrators to develop your innovative business together,

  the RIMA consortium will assist you free of charge during the execution of your experiment with Technical Services (consultancy, lab facilities etc), Business Services (organisation, finance, ethics, legal etc.) and Mentoring Services to facilitate a smooth path to bring your innovation onto the market.

1.2 What types of proposals will be eligible?

Technology Transfer Experiments (TTE) consist of developing, testing and validating the technical and economic viability of a robotic-based representative model or prototype system to be applied in ‘Target Use Domain’ operational environment.

Technology Demonstrators (TD) consist of validating the technical and economic viability of a new or improved Robotic-based technology, product, process, service or solution in a ‘Target Use Domain’ operational environment, whether industrial or other, involving where appropriate a larger scale prototype or demonstrator.

1.3 What are the defined domains?

Although the RIMA network aims to select a portfolio of proposals that will result in a balanced outcome among the different application domains, the final decision as to proposals approved per domain will be made based on the quality and potential of the submitted applications.

A full detailed procedure of selection is described below. This selection process is based on a very strict adoption of standards with respect to transparency, equal treatment, conflict of interest and confidentiality.

Proposals for Technology Transfer Experiments (TTE) and Technology Demonstrators (TD) should fit in at least one of the RIMA Target Use Domains that are:

•   Water supply and sanitation

•   Energy generation and distribution

•   Oil & gas

•   Nuclear

•   Road, rail and infrastructure connected with cities

•   Transport hubs (ports, airports, stations, etc.)

• Water Supply and Sanitation

Water infrastructures such as wastewater pipes, large diameter tunnels, underground storage tanks, long-haul stretches, inverts, crowns, culverts, and manholes are difficult to access and hazardous environments for operators in charge of inspection and maintenance activities. Other assets, such as drinking water reservoirs, are easier to access but require significant manpower for regular inspection and water quality control. However, keeping an accurate and updated knowledge of the condition of these assets is necessary to deploy appropriate asset management plans and to prevent failures or disruptions of the water services. The challenges related to these activities include a wide range of assets to be inspected, from very small ones to large ones (including large reservoirs), confined spaces with GPS-denied environments, the presence of debris, the risks of highly hazardous and corrosive chemicals, the presence of pressurized water, etc. The surface accessibility to these underground assets for the I&M activities –diagnosis, repair, renewal - is also a key issue considering its impact on surrounding environment (traffic disruption, noise, ...) and the risk of disease for workers (lifting of manhole covers, pavement cutting, etc.). This topic concerns both civil and industrial infrastructures.

Robotic devices can navigate in such harsh environments over extended time periods, producing CCTV, 3D reconstructions and defect profiling with ground penetrating radars, laser sensors and sonars, and potentially adapt to pipes with different sizes, shapes and materials to accurately estimate the remaining intact material for end-of-life estimations.

I&M in the water sector requires multi-sensing and autonomous robots able to navigate in GPS-denied environment and to adapt to various shapes and sizes of infrastructures, as well as the manipulation and actuation capability. Often, such robots must be amphibious, i.e. they have to be able to operate in partially and fully water submerged pipes and canals. Robotic devices are also required to support operators for the lifting of heavy manhole covers and to reduce risks and nuisances related to surface maintenance works. The technologies need to be safe, efficient, robust, easy to use and low cost to operate. These robots will perform operations in a variety of locations, some of them of difficult access. For this reason, it will be important to take aerial robots into consideration. Furthermore, these robots can cover larger distances to inspect water infrastructures compared to ground robots.

• Energy generation and distribution

Energy generation and distribution include wind, solar, hydro, coal, and power distribution. The maintenance of solar panels and solar thermal collectors has an important influence on the electricity generation. This is the reason why a great effort on alternative means of electric power generation in the EU has been wind power. The industry hopes that wind energy can satisfy 20% of total EU electricity demand by 2020 and 33% by 2030. This requires a drastic reduction of I&M costs of the towers and blades of wind turbines. Energy distribution involves electrical power lines and substations, involving many thousands of kilometres and difficult or high-priced access.

Robots can navigate in such harsh environments over long-endurance missions, with perception systems (cameras, lidars and other sensors), and potentially adapt to different energy power stations of different sizes and shapes. Furthermore, a robot or a team of robots, could produce 3D reconstructions, defect profiling, and perform maintenance tasks. It will be vital to use robots that can reach high altitude locations.

• Oil&gas

Extraction, refining and distribution, including offshore infrastructure and decommissioning, is important in oil and gas plants. The benefits and demand for robotics are vast to secure the safety of people working within inspection and maintenance, reduce environmental risks and the cost of downtime. Robotics solutions often need to conform to regulations for operations in explosive atmospheres (such as ATEX). The inspection and maintenance include both the plants facilities and the distribution of the resources. For the plants, it will be important to be able to inspect every single location, including process piping and fixed equipment. These parts of the plants can be located in high altitudes, underwater or offshore. For distribution, solutions that are able to inspect large distances need to be considered.

The cost of I&M of oil and gas industries is more than 2 billion in the world and 600 million in 101 refineries in Europe. In addition to inspection and maintenance cost of operational plants, hundreds of offshore oil and gas platforms, including 250 fixed installations, 3,000 pipelines and 5,000 wells, will be decommissioned from the North Sea involving a cost of tens of billions over the next 25 years.

• Nuclear

Nuclear Infrastructure encompasses:

• ·  nuclear power plants,

• ·  nuclear reprocessing facilities,

• ·  facilities for mining and processing of radioactive ore

• ·  any other nuclear facilities, including the waste disposal and the decommissioning of aforementioned nuclear infrastructures.

Inspection & maintenance activities/tasks within the domain of nuclear infrastructures are in many cases executed manually and thereby require extensive personnel protection measures, engineering controls and detailed work-planning/-monitoring to achieve required high safety levels that could be streamlined with the assistance of robotics solutions within the process .

Robotic applications are expected to exploit remotely operated technologies coupled with state-of-the-art technologies for measurements, handling of tooling, etc. The applications are challenged to cope with areas of potentially irradiated or contaminated materials/environments. Furthermore, consideration should be made in some cases for remote control to be applied behind thick walls of reinforced concrete.

Finally, the application is preferably tested in practice at nuclear facilities or under equivalent conditions.

• Road, rail and infrastructure connected with cities

Road, Rail and Civil infrastructure involve all the road-related and rail-related components that exist inside and outside the cities, as well as any other civil infrastructure within the city. The only exceptions to this list are the transportation hubs such as stations, transportation warehouses, ports, airports etc. Apart from the open roads and rails, which are the obvious infrastructure in this domain, there are also others, including all the peripheral infrastructure that is connected to them, such as traffic-lights, tolls, tunnels, bridges, lane separation structures, road lights, tunnel fans, power cables, signals and signs. The infrastructure in this domain is divided into three different categories, each one with specific needs and challenges. These categories, in the order of interest for this domain, are:

• Road & Rail Bridges Road & Rail Tunnels Open Road & Rail
• Transport hubs (ports, airports, stations, etc.)

A transport hub is a place where passengers and cargo are exchanged between vehicles or/and between transport modes. In this call Transport Hubs include ports, airport, railway and interchanges.

The infrastructure-related to Transport Hubs and Railway encompasses a few generic challenges and specific challenges. The most stringent challenges have been set out in challenges 1 to 6, and one open call (challenge 7).

1.4 What challenges can be addressed in the applications for this domain?

As described above, there are two types of actions, namely Technology Transfer Experiments and Technology Demonstrators with different duration and scope. Each proposal that will be created by a micro-consortium should apply to one type of action in one specific Target Application Domain. Nevertheless, within the same Target Application Domain, the proposal can address one or more challenges, as long as the project’s content is solid. The detailed description of the challenges is provided in Annex 5.

1.5 What happens after the proposals are submitted?

Immediately after the first Open Call submission deadline (19th of December 2019, 16:00 CET - Brussels Time), the evaluation process will begin (as described in detail in Section 4 of this Guide). In order to be eligible for Expert’s evaluation phase, applications will be checked for compliance against the eligibility criteria.

Experts will evaluate proposals submitted through the online system and score them adequately to the quality of the content presented. The goal of the process in the first Open Call is to select a total number of up to 21 promising experiments that will be divided, according to TRL starting point and experimentation timeframe, into up to 6 Technology Transfer Experiments [TTE] (start in TRL5 - 14 months for execution) and up to 15 Technology Demonstrators [TD] (start in TRL6 - 6 months for execution).

1.6 What are the next steps?

Once your proposal is evaluated by 2 (two) independent and confidential evaluators, ‘Evaluation Panel Committees’ (one for each application domain) will select, among those above the threshold, the best proposals that will be invited to the Jury Day. Your proposal will have an individual slot in which you will present it and have an interview with the members of the Selection Committee. After the Consensus Meeting, Ethical Committee will review all selected projects. Before the Sub-Grant Agreement signature, a Feasibility Plan will be defined by each TTE and TD under the supervision of a DIH and with LMS (RIMA Project partner) support. It will describe the technical and market potential of the Robotics solutions proposed within TTE/TD, as well as milestones and KPIs to be achieved by them during the Technology Transfer/Technology Demonstrator Program. Once all these formalities are executed, the Consortium will sign the ‘RIMA Sub-grant Agreement’ with the final beneficiaries of FSTP. The applicants who undersign the Sub-Grant Agreement will be declared the winners of the 1st RIMA Open Call. This is the beginning of the program. The whole Technology Transfer/Technology Demonstrator Program will last up to 14 months.

2 Financial support provided

The maximum amount of financial support to be granted to each micro-consortium selected in the first Open Call will be up to € 300.000 in the case of Technology Transfer Experiments and up to € 100.000 in the case of Technical Demonstrators.

Technology Transfer Experiments (TTE) may receive up to € 300K EU Funding per TTE (duration 14 months, amount per consortium) on the following stages of the Program:

• Jury Day mini grant: fixed lump sum of € 1,000

• Technology Development Stage: fixed lump sum of € 100,000

• Technology Experimentation Stage: fixed lump sum of € 100,000

• System Prototype Demonstration Stage: fixed lump sum of € 99.000

  Technology Demonstrators (TD) may receive up to € 100K EU Funding per TD (duration 6 months, amount per consortium) on the following stages of the Program:

• Jury Day mini grant: fixed lump sum of € 1,000

• System Prototype Demonstration Stage: fixed lump sum of € 99,000

  The amount will be granted to each TTE/TD as the result of being positively evaluated and approved to participate in the next stage of the Program, following a lump sum approach. Each TTE/TD must be implemented by a micro- consortium. A micro-consortium must be formed by a minimum of 2 independent SMEs or slightly bigger companies that will carry out the TTE/TD. The micro-consortium must be composed of one Service/ Product ProviderandoneTechnologySupplier. Theamountgrantedtoeachmicro-consortiumwillbetransferredtothe organization acting as coordinator of the micro-consortium as per the Sub-grant Agreement. The coordinator is obliged to transfer the appropriate parts of the grant to other members of a micro-consortium according to a separate arrangement within the micro-consortium. The total amount granted to one entity within different projects granted under RIMA Project cannot exceed the amount of 300.000 EUR.

  Grant will be paid in several tranches upon the delivery of the agreed milestones/KPI’s. Payment schedule will be described in detail in the Sub-grant agreement.

  For participation in the Jury Day the mini-grant will be paid. This mini grant is a lump sum of € 1,000 that will be paid to each micro-consortium attending the Jury Day. The amount of mini grant granted to each micro- consortium will be transferred to the organization acting as the coordinator of the micro-consortium as per the Sub-grant Agreement. The coordinator is obliged to transfer the appropriate parts of the mini grant to other members of a micro-consortium.

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