The European Economic Recovery Plan seeks a new deal on vital new and traditional industrial sectors in order to foster economic growth and creation of employment, as well as maintaining our high standards of quality of life. Knowledge, technology, innovation and new markets have complementary roles for reaching these goals.

The Conference “The European Framework Programmes: From Economic Recovery to Sustainability” will be the key public event in launching a series of new Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) as cornerstone of the smart investments of the European Economic Recovery Plan:

• Factories of the Future (FoF)
• Energy Efficient Buildings (EeB)
• Green Cars (GCI)
• Future Internet (FI)

The event will be the core of the “FP7: EUROPEAN INNOVATION AND RTD TRANSFORMING SECTORS’ WEEK“, and being organized under the auspices of the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council 2010, will provide an open environment for discussions with prominent leaders from industry, researchers and the European Community, paving the way for future RTD and innovation programmes and actions targeting on adding value on main industrial sectors providing inputs for the European Competitiveness Council of Ministers.

The city of Valencia will be the venue for the “FP7: INNOVATION AND RTD TRANSFORMING SECTORS` WEEK“, which will hold the Conference as its core event: April 13th will be devoted to "Energy Efficient Building (EeB)" PPP and "Factories of the Future (FoF)" PPP and April 14th will cover "Green Car (GC)" PPP and "Future Internet (FI) PPP".

Side events within the week include meetings of E2B Association and EFFRA on April 12th, the 14th Future Internet Assembly on April 15th and 16th and other co-located events organized together with the European Commission

Factories of the Future

PPP consists of a research programme of € 1.2 billion to support the manufacturing industry in the development of new and sustainable technologies. The programme is financed jointly by industry and the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The objective is to help EU manufacturing enterprises, in particular SMEs, to adapt to global competitive pressures by improving the technological base of EU manufacturing across a broad range of sectors.

Energy-efficient buildings

PPP consists of a financial envelope of € 1 billion to boost the construction sector, and aims at promoting green technologies and the development of energy efficient systems and materials in new and renovated buildings - this, with a view to radically reducing their energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The programme is financed jointly by industry and the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7).

The Green Cars

PPP has a foreseen envelope of €5 billion to boost to the automotive industry in a time of economic hardship, and support the development of new, sustainable forms of road transport. The scope of this initiative is really broad, and research is just one part of it. These financial support measures will be supplemented by demand-side measures, involving regulatory action by Member States and the EU, such as the reduction of car registration taxes on low CO2 cars to stimulate car purchase by citizens.

The Future Internet

PPP has been recently initiated and proposed by industry on the basis of collaborative work that has been ongoing since mid-2008. An essential characteristic of such a PPP should be to develop open, standardised, cross-sector service platforms. From a European policy perspective, sectors such as healthcare, mobility, environment and energy management are prime candidates to benefit from novel ‘smart’ – internet-empowered – infrastructures, which will facilitate the rapid take-up and adoption of services by millions of users and consumers.

Tuesday 1 June 2010, at 17:00 hours (Brussels local time)

10:30    Opening remarks, introduction to the ICT PSP Work Programme 2010      K Rouhana
11:00    Presentation of themes and objectives with Q&A  (1)–    ICT for low carbon economy and smart mobility–    ICT for health and inclusion–    ICT for improved public services for citizens and businesses    C Maloney + J JaaskelainenI Iakovidis  + P TimmersM Rohen
12:10    ICT PSP funding instruments and grant agreement with Q&A    P Diry
12:30    Break  (Sandwiches and coffee offered in the lobby)   
13:50    How to make a proposal with Q&AIdealist tool for partnership    T McKinlay(TBC)
14:20    Presentation of themes and objectives with Q&A  (2)–    Digital Libraries–    Open innovation for future Internet-enabled services in "smart" cities–    Multilingual Web    R Swetenham P Blixt  R Cencioni
15:30    Networking for participants (6 thematic stands with POs-in the meeting room and lobby)   
16:30     Close of the information day   

3. CONTENT OF THE CALL FOR PROPOSALS IN 2010
SUMMARY TABLE: THEMES, OBJECTIVES, FUNDING INSTRUMENTS, INTENTIONS OF FUNDING
Themes and objectives Funding Instrument
Budget and Intended number of proposals to be funded
Call for proposals (details are provided in chapter 3.1 to 3.6)

Theme 1: ICT for a low carbon economy and smart mobility 19 M€
1.1: ICT for energy and water efficiency in social housing Pilot B Several pilots EU funding up to 9,5 M€
1.2: ICT for water efficiency Thematic network 1 TN EU funding up to 0,5 M€
1.3: Energy efficient co-operative transport management systems Pilot B up to 3 pilots EU funding up to 4 M€
1.4: Support to eCall implementation based on 112 Pilot A 1 pilot EU funding up to 5 M€

Theme 2 : Digital Libraries 30 M€
2.1: Coordinating Europeana Thematic network 1 TN EU funding up to 9 M€
2.2: Enhancing/Aggregating content in Europeana Best Practice Network Several BPNs
2.3: Digitising content for Europeana Pilot B Several pilots
2.4: Access to European Rights Information / Registry of Orphan Works Best Practice Network 1 BPN
2.5: Open access to scientific information Pilot B Several pilots
2.6: Statistics on cultural heritage digitisation activities Thematic network 1 TN

Theme 3 : ICT for health and inclusion 14 M€
3.1: Enlargement of the Pilot "epSOS" on eHealth Interoperability for patient's summaries and ePrescription Pilot A 1 pilot
EU funding up to 7 M€
3.2: Scaling up of eHealth services and supporting the EU eHealth governance initiative Thematic Network 2 TN EU funding up to 1 M€
3.3: e-Accessibility of Public Digital Terminals Pilot B One large or several pilots
3.4: Assistive technologies and accessibility portal Thematic network One large or several TN EU funding up to 1 M€

Theme 4: Open innovation for future internetenabled services in "smart" cities 15 M€
4.1: Open Innovation for future Internet-enabled Services in "smart" Cities Pilot B Several pilots

Theme 5: ICT for improved public services for citizens and businesses 13 M€
5.1: Enlargement of the Pilot "SPOCS" preparing the implementation of the Services Directive Pilot A 1 pilot EU funding up to 5 M€
5.2: eJustice services Pilot A 1 pilot EU funding up to 7 M€
5.3: Universal ID Thematic network 1 TN EU funding up to 1 M€
Theme 6: Multilingual Web 16 M€
6.1: Open linguistic infrastructure Pilot B Several pilots
6.2: Multilingual online services Pilot B Several pilots

Independent, to results of (Sounds, 4EeB) I am inviting you to a  FP7-ICT6, 2.1a, Cognitive systems and Robotics effort AUDIOBOT, Artificial Audio Cognitive System for serving Audition sense and Auditory capacity to Robot FerranCall title: ICT call 6 - 13Apr10 - ICT 2009.2.1 Cognitive Systems and Robotics  

Call title: ICT call 6

• Call identifier: FP7-ICT-2009-6
• Date of publication73: 24 November 2009
• Deadline74: 13 April 2010 at 17.00.00 (Brussels local time)
• Indicative budget75,76: EUR 286 million

73 The Director-General responsible for the call may publish it up to one month prior to or after the envisaged date of
publication.
74 The Director-General responsible may delay this deadline by up to two months
75 The budget for this call is indicative. The final budget awarded to actions implemented through calls for proposals may vary:
• The final budget of the call may vary by up to 10% of the total value of the indicated budget for each call; and
• Any repartition of the call budget may also vary by up to 10% of the total value of the indicated budget for the call
See indicative budget breakdown in section 5 of the ICT work programme.
• Topics called:

Challenge 2: Cognitive systems, interaction, robotics

ICT 2009.2.1 Cognitive Systems and Robotics

CP, CSA (CA only)

4.2 Challenge 2: Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics
Engineering systems with the capability to sense and understand an unstructured environment is a challenge which goes beyond today's systems engineering paradigm. Present day systems engineering relies on specifying every eventuality a system will have to cope with in the execution of its task(s), and programming the appropriate response in each case. With the abundance of ever cheaper, smaller sensors, actuators and wireless tranceivers that link systems to the real world and with other systems, this approach faces serious limitations:
- The real world is generally too nuanced, too complicated and too unpredictable to be
summarised within a limited set of specifications; there will inevitably be novel situations
and the system will always have gaps, conflicts or ambiguities in its own knowledge and
capabilities.
- Even in situations where unpredictable events are less likely, the problem of extracting
meaning and purpose from bursts of sensor data or strings of computer code arises,
because we don't have a formalisation of information processing that embodies semantics.
Challenge 2 aims to extend systems engineering to the design of systems that can carry out
useful tasks (e.g. manipulation and grasping, exploration and navigation, monitoring and
control, situation assessment, communication and interaction), autonomously or in
cooperation with people, in circumstances that were not planned for explicitly at design time.
Specifically, such systems should be:
- more robust: performance should not degrade when they are presented with unexpected data;
- more adaptive: performance should be open (within reasonable constraints) to changing
service requirements, without the need for extensive human intervention;
- more effective: performance should improve because they can predict or anticipate what
might happen at some point in the future, near or far;
- more natural: performance should be tolerant to the ambiguity and uncertainty that is a
consequence of dealing with humans, and performance should improve with time.

System capabilities in dimensions such as deliberation and learning, and innovation and
creativity, would appear to be necessary to meet this aim. This clearly calls for design that
shares some characteristics with the higher-level cognitive processes of the brain. For the
purposes of this work programme a cognitive system can cope with the uncertainty (in the
system's environment) that makes robust and adaptive performance difficult to achieve. It
should also be borne in mind that it makes no sense to speak of robustness or adaptability
without first specifying the requirements of interest: a robust lawnmower is different to a
robust operating system or a robust planner.
Research and development efforts should aim at generating actual design principles. They
will contribute to establishing scientific foundations for such principles. Alternatively, they
may aim to achieve significant engineering progress, e.g. through integration.
Manufacturers of robots of all sorts, autonomous vehicles, smart cameras and sensor networks
will benefit from R&D efforts. Europe has strong manufacturing capabilities and a significant
share of world market revenues in these sectors. The emergence of service robots and vision
systems that operate outside structured manufacturing environments offer added opportunities
for market expansion.
Likewise automated machine translation stands to profit from more robust and adaptive
methods for natural language understanding. With 23 official languages, the EU is at the
forefront of multi-lingualism and it would be unrealistic to assume that the lingua franca in
machine translation is, or will remain, English. A strategic challenge for Europe in today's
globalised economy is to overcome language barriers through technological means.
Technologies developed under this Challenge are expected to be tailored to meet key societal
and economic needs.

FP7 Cooperation Work Programme: Information and Communication Technologies

4.2 Challenge 2: Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics

Engineering systems with the capability to sense and understand an unstructured environment is a challenge which goes beyond today's systems engineering paradigm. Present day systems engineering relies on specifying every eventuality a system will have to cope with in the execution of its task(s), and programming the appropriate response in each case. With the abundance of ever cheaper, smaller sensors, actuators and wireless tranceivers that link
systems to the real world and with other systems, this approach faces serious limitations:
- The real world is generally too nuanced, too complicated and too unpredictable to be summarised within a limited set of specifications; there will inevitably be novel situations and the system will always have gaps, conflicts or ambiguities in its own knowledge and capabilities.
- Even in situations where unpredictable events are less likely, the problem of extracting meaning and purpose from bursts of sensor data or strings of computer code arises, because we don't have a formalisation of information processing that embodies semantics.

Challenge 2 aims to extend systems engineering to the design of systems that can carry out useful tasks (e.g. manipulation and grasping, exploration and navigation, monitoring and control, situation assessment, communication and interaction), autonomously or in cooperation with people, in circumstances that were not planned for explicitly at design time.
Specifically, such systems should be:
- more robust: performance should not degrade when they are presented with unexpected data;
- more adaptive: performance should be open (within reasonable constraints) to changing service requirements, without the need for extensive human intervention;
- more effective: performance should improve because they can predict or anticipate what might happen at some point in the future, near or far;
- more natural: performance should be tolerant to the ambiguity and uncertainty that is a consequence of dealing with humans, and performance should improve with time.
System capabilities in dimensions such as deliberation and learning, and innovation and creativity, would appear to be necessary to meet this aim. This clearly calls for design that shares some characteristics with the higher-level cognitive processes of the brain. For the  urposes of this work programme a cognitive system can cope with the uncertainty (in the system's environment) that makes robust and adaptive performance difficult to achieve. It should also be borne in mind that it makes no sense to speak of robustness or adaptability without first specifying the requirements of interest: a robust lawnmower is different to a robust operating system or a robust planner.

Research and development efforts should aim at generating actual design principles. They will contribute to establishing scientific foundations for such principles. Alternatively, they may aim to achieve significant engineering progress, e.g. through integration. Manufacturers of robots of all sorts, autonomous vehicles, smart cameras and sensor networks will benefit from R&D efforts. Europe has strong manufacturing capabilities and a significant share of world market revenues in these sectors. The emergence of service robots and vision systems that operate outside structured manufacturing environments offer added opportunities for market expansion. Likewise automated machine translation stands to profit from more robust and adaptive methods for natural language understanding. With 23 official languages, the EU is at the
forefront of multi-lingualism and it would be unrealistic to assume that the lingua franca in machine translation is, or will remain, English. A strategic challenge for Europe in today's globalised economy is to overcome language barriers through technological means.
Technologies developed under this Challenge are expected to be tailored to meet key societal and economic needs.

Objective ICT-2009.2.1: Cognitive Systems and Robotics
Target outcomes
a) New approaches towards understanding and solving key issues related to the engineering of artificial cognitive systems – see above; among these issues are the following:
- representation / categorisation / recognition / interpretation of objects, events, situations, behaviours and affordances in realistically scaled real-world environments;
- the role and implementation of memory and learning in artificial systems;
- adaptive and anticipatory behaviour within incompletely specified environments;
- goal-setting and strategies for achieving goals;
- collective behaviour arising from the interplay of (possibly large numbers of) individual subsystems;
- modelling and design of (multimodal) interaction, communication and collaboration.
Projects are expected to demonstrate measurable progress on a suitable mix of these issues.
b) New approaches towards endowing robots with advanced perception and action capabilities, and towards developing pertinent benchmarks and tests. Of particular interest are:
- 3D sensing for everyday objects and environments;
- motion and affordance perception;
- learning and control strategies for linking perception and action;
- benchmarking with a focus on navigation and autonomy.
Projects are expected to demonstrate measurable progress on at least one of these issues.

Expected impact for a) and b)
• Leading-edge research capacity in Europe in cognitive systems engineering and robotics.
• Innovations in service robots, and industrial production and manufacturing processes.
• Widespread comparative assessment of robot performance (for different tasks and technologies).
• New market opportunities, and technologies for increased productivity and efficiency in EU industries.

c) New ways of designing and implementing complete robotic systems that operate largely autonomously in loosely structured dynamic environments and, where necessary, in close co-operation with people. Systems may be distributed and should integrate rich sensory-motor skills (for example, grasping, manipulation, locomotion) with high level
cognitive competencies (for example, reasoning, planning and decision-making). As appropriate, they should be demonstrably more robust, dependable, flexible and adaptive, and safer than it is possible today, and improve their performance through learning.

d) New, scientifically grounded system architectures integrating communication, control, and cognitive capabilities to enable meaningful and self-sustaining autonomous action in real-world environments, natural interaction with people (where necessary), robust adaptation to changing operating conditions, and self-improvement. The viability and scalability of these architectures will be demonstrated through suitable experiments based on physical implementations and/or simulations of complete systems.

e) A framework to facilitate cross-fertilisation between academic and industrial research efforts in robotics through widespread experimentation with industry-strength platforms in academic research labs and through the joint definition of longer term scenarios and requirements to direct robotics research towards common goals; to assure a comparative assessment of performance through definition of suitable metrics and through benchmarking (supported by competitions or otherwise).

Expected impact for c), d) and e)
• Integrated and consolidated scientific foundations for engineering cognitive systems under a variety of physical instantiations.
• Significant increase of the quality of service of such systems and of their sustainability in terms of, for instance, energy consumption, usability and serviceability, through the integration of cognitive capabilities.
• Innovation capacity in a wide range of application domains through the integration of cognitive capabilities.
• Improved competitive position of the robotics industry in existing and emerging markets for instance in the following sectors: flexible small scale manufacturing;
professional and domestic services; assistance and rehabilitation; construction, maintenance and repair; urban search and rescue; exploration and mining;
entertainment, education and training.
• Consensus by industry on the need (or not) for particular standards. More widely accepted benchmarks. Strengthened links between industry and academia. (especially (e)).
Research and development pertaining to targets (a), (b), (c) and (d) will be guided by
demanding, yet pragmatic, application scenarios. Target environments may be, for example, difficult terrains, buildings, homes, public spaces, shop floors, power plants and other technical infrastructures. Functionalities include: exploration, monitoring, controlling all sorts of sensors and actuators and communication and interaction with people (also including
advanced human-robot interaction).
The applicability of research results is expected to go beyond the scenarios through which they have been obtained. Proposals strictly focusing on applications that are targeted under Challenges other than Challenge 2 are not eligible under Challenge 2.
Pertinent research may be informed by neuro- and behavioural sciences and determine the requirements basic technologies have to meet in order to enable creating the targeted systems.
Systems may for instance employ new sensor and sensor networking technologies or 'intelligent' materials to enhance their functionality, performance, and efficiency of resource usage, and bring new functionalities, like self-configuration and self-repair, within reach of FP7 Cooperation Work Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
industrial realisation. Research will also significantly broaden the remit of machine learning and put stronger emphasis on intelligent process control in real-time.

f) A 'Virtual Institute' integrating diverse research areas whose problems, techniques and solutions need to be brought together to understand cognitive systems and design useful new ones; they will develop a requirements- and capability-led understanding of cognitive systems that can be applied across multiple engineering and application domains.

Expected impact for f)
• Leading-edge research in Europe in cognitive systems engineering and robotics.

g) Co-ordinated co-operation and communication within a multidisciplinary robotics community in Europe, with concomitant outreach to potential users of robotic systems h) Co-ordinated co-operation and communication within a multidisciplinary artificial cognitive systems research community in Europe, with concomitant outreach to potential industrial applications.
Expected impact for g) and h)
• Stronger cohesion among relevant communities; awareness built among wider (including non-professional) audiences of the potential of the technologies at issue.
Where and as appropriate, activities under this objective, and in particular those aiming at targets g) and h), are expected to contribute to a better understanding of the ethical, social and socioeconomic issues related to the design, deployment and operation of robotic and cognitive systems.

Funding schemes
a)-b): STREP; c)-e): IP; f) NoE; g)-h) CA
Indicative budget distribution10
EUR 153 million
Calls:
• ICT call 4: target outcomes (b), (d), (f), (g)
- IP/STREP: EUR 65 million of which a minimum of 50% to IPs and a minimum of 30% to STREPs
- NoE: EUR 6 million
- CA: EUR 2 million
• ICT call 6: target outcomes (a), (c), (e), (h)
- IP/STREP: EUR 78 million of which a minimum of 50% to IPs and a minimum of 30% to STREPs
- CA: EUR 2 million