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ECHORD++ Integrates Public Bodies

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November 14, 2014

ECHORD++ Integrates Public Bodies

The EU-funded robotics project ECHORD++ will hold two market consultation days in order to inform about its Pre-Commercial Procurement Pilots (PCP Pilots). The first will take place on November 20th 2014 in Barcelona, the second on 3rd December 2014 in Munich.

During these events the ECHORD++ consortium will introduce the challenges in healthcare and urban robotics, which resemble the requirements of the following four public bodies:

  • AQuAS – Agència de Qualitat I Avaluació Sanitàries de Catalunya, a public entity of the Catalan Department of Health
  • Fundació Privada Sant Antoni Abat, a non-profit private foundation managing and developing innovation and research in healthcare
  • Barcelona Cicle de lAigua, the water supplier of Barcelona
  • Barcelona City Council, for robotic products that are not yet available on the market.

From 15th January 2015 mixed consortia of robotic manufacturers and research institutes will have the opportunity to apply for funding of an estimated € 1.3 Milion (direct costs) in a competitive process in order to develop small-scale test series for the needs of these public bodies.

The idea behind the PCP Pilots in ECHORD++ is to include public bodies in the robotic product development. By acting as technologically demanding first buyers, public procurers can drive innovation from the demand side.

AQuAS and Fundació Privada Sant Antoni Abat have defined "Robotized Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment" as the challenge for the scenario healthcare, whereas the Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona Cicle de l Aigua named "Robots for the inspection and the clearance of the sewer network in cities" as the one for urban robotics.

The Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is a diagnostic instrument designed to collect data on the medical, psychosocial and functional resources and problems of elderly patients. The goal of robotizing geriatric tests is to reduce the amount of time medical professionals spend on taking tests and thereby enable them to invest more time on care planning decisions.

Sewer inspections require many humans to work in risky and unhealthy conditions. Introducing a robotics solution in this process aims at reducing the labor risks, improving the precision of sewer inspections and optimizing the sewer cleaning resources of the city.

Details on the venue and agenda of the market consultation days are available on the official website of Project ECHORD++ : www.echord.eu

The aim of ECHORD++ is to strengthen the knowledge transfer between scientific research, industry and users in robotics and to stimulate their cooperation. The EU-funded project with a runtime of five years (2013 – 2018) funds small-scale research projects called experiments, Pre-Commercial Procurement Pilots and established Robotics Innovation Facilities (RIFs), open labs which provide state-of-the-art robotic hardware and software as well as scientific and technical support.

ECHORD++ is a joint project of Technische Universität München (project coordinator), Blue Ocean Robotics, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Commissariat à lÉnergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Scuola Superiore SantAnna, R.U.Robotics and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

More information can be found on the projects website www.echord.eu

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