Created by ICT Results ICT Results is an online editorial service promoting the results and activities of ICT-related research projects funded by the European Commission. The service showcases how European research makes a difference by bringing targeted news to its varied audiences comprising policy-makers, business, the media and ICT community. European ICT research success stories

Every year the European Commission sets aside around a billion euros to support ICT Research & Development in thousands of collaborative projects involving many of Europe's brightest engineers, technologists and scientists. Here we provide a snapshot of some of their successes helping to shape a better, safer, healthier Europe.

The OLLA project has put European manufacturers at the forefront of the global lighting industry by making breakthroughs in more efficient illumination technology.

The researchers have demonstrated that white organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are a true next-generation illumination technology. In future, OLEDs could triple the efficiencies achieved with compact fluorescent lighting, thus cutting energy use, CO2 emissions and total cost of operation.

In addition, OLEDs are a flat, thin and lightweight lighting solution opening up numerous possibilities. The technology can be incorporated into (flexible) displays, billboards, signage and even furniture and toys.

Standard incandescent or filament light bulbs achieve only 5% efficiency. The rest of the energy is radiated as waste heat. Compact fluorescent light bulbs are already three times as efficient.

Research indicates that one day OLEDs could emit all the energy consumed as

visible light. And that without compromising overall light quality.

Lighting efficiency is measured in lumens per watt of electricity (lm/W).

For the first time, European researchers have created a white illuminating OLED lamp generating 50lm/W with a lifetime of over 10,000 hours.

With this milestone the OLLA researchers tripled energy efficiency compared to an ordinary tungsten light bulb and increased the lifetime more than tenfold.

But the efficiency and lifetime could be improved further, even beyond the efficacy of fluorescent tube lights. In monochrome, green-light OLEDs have already achieved an efficacy of 130lm/W.

OLLA is an investment in the future of the European lighting industry, helping the continent’s manufacturers achieve a dominant position in OLED lighting technology worldwide.

The researchers have already created decorative OLED lighting tiles for ceilings and walls.

They have also developed novel processes, such as a method to produce polymer OLEDs using gravure printing. This technology is a means of producing cheap and flexible OLED lighting applications.

Because they are flexible, thin and light, OLEDS pave the way to modern electronics and ICT devices which are more power efficient and mobile.

OLLA channels European expertise into creating a high-brightness, high-efficiency, flat light source for use in lighting applications.

OLED technology offers excellent colour rendering, and a pleasant, near full-spectrum light.

OLEDs light up instantly and are dimmable. The light can be emitted in all colours of the white-light spectrum. And OLEDs contain no harmful substances, making recycling easier.

Besides basic lighting applications, other uses of the technology could include a homogeneously lit ceiling with intelligent light levels and colour control, and a window that provides natural light during daytime and artificial light at night.

Project name: OLLA
Start-end date: October 2004 - June 2008
EU funding: €12m (towards total project costs of €20m)
EU initiative: New efficient lighting solutions
Project website: www.olla-project.org

The medical implant field has evolved relatively slowly since Swedish scientists invented the first 'implantable' heart pacemaker, some 50 years ago, showing the potential for treating medical conditions with internal electronic devices.

Now a team of European researchers has developed a new range of intelligent medical implants and diagnostic systems, integrating their combined expertise in micro-, bio- and nano-technologies.

Around 50% of the population will suffer from at least one of the health problems targeted in this project. The advances made thus offer new hope to millions of patients suffering from conditions, such as stroke and incontinence, and diseases affecting our eyes, ears and brains.

Groundbreaking new products being pioneered by the EU, Swiss and Israeli project partners include a functional electrical stimulation (FES) implant used to help restore muscle movement or bladder control following a stroke or illness, and an eye implant restoring partial sight in certain cases of blindness. A cochlear implant under development could help restore lost hearing and reduce the size of external hearing aids.

A number of important diagnostic tools are also emerging from the project. An implant to measure the pressure inside the brain cavity will provide a key diagnostic tool for sufferers of hydrocephalus, where excess fluid can damage the brain. A contact lens incorporating a 'strain gauge' is also being trialled to help diagnose glaucoma.

The products developed share a number of core micro-technologies that will give the European medical devices industry a toolkit of techniques for the future.

Wireless communication has been incorporated into implants to allow contact-free dataflow to an external receptor, resulting in a medical implant communication service (MICS) with wide-ranging applications.

The development of tiny micro-electrodes to stimulate nerves or muscles and the connectors to join them to supporting electronics has helped decrease the size and increase the efficiency of implants.

New materials have been developed which will improve the safety and longevity of implants.

Healthy Aim's results have clear commercial potential. One notable breakthrough is in the area of implantable batteries, currently dominated by American producers.

Thanks to the project, two new European prototypes are moving towards clinical trials: a rechargeable battery and a fuel cell powered by the body's own glucose which could run a heart pacemaker for ten years!

The MICS system developed in Healthy Aims will be manufactured and sold by Zarlink and is expected to quickly attract a global market.

The new materials and technologies being developed have a future potential far beyond the initial range of products proposed, including possible applications in preventive medicine, sport and rehabilitation.

Project name: Healthy Aims
Start-end date: December 2003 - November 2007
EU funding: €15m (towards total project costs of €22.6m)
EU initiative: Micro-, bio- and nano-systems
Project website: www.healthyaims.org

The 180 billion semiconductor industry has put electronic devices, such as mobile phones, MP3 players and notebook computers in the hands of the mass public over the last 25 years, as the chips inside them have grown cheaper, smaller and more powerful. Now, a team of European researchers have pushed the boundaries miniaturisation one step further.

The NanoCMOS project, coordinated by STMicroelectronics, the largest European semiconductor supplier, has developed a 45-nanometre (nm) generation of chip, allowing more computing power to be packed into a smaller space with a lower price tag. Consumers can therefore expect the trend towards smaller, cheaper and more feature-rich electronic devices to continue.

CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chips, the type used in virtually every electronic device in the world, have shrunk continuously since they were invented in the 1960s. They have followed the theory of Intel co-founder Gordon E Moore who predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors - and hence the computing power - that can be cost-effectively placed on a chip will double approximately every two years. At the current pace of technological progress, that trend, known as Moore's Law, should continue for another 12 to 15 years. They have also become cheaper: in the early 1970s one megabyte of memory cost more than a house, now it costs less than a piece of candy.

NanoCMOS' 45-nm chips, with features more than 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, represent the latest and smallest generation of computer chip and will replace the 90-nm and 65-nm chips used in most electronic systems today. NanoCMOS is therefore helping to prolong a trend that has seen the cost per transistor fall 2,500 times over the last 25 years as the world's transistor manufacturing capacity has increased by a factor of 30,000. The 45-nm generation, which has been validated through the creation of an SRAM (static random access memory) chip, is due to start being used in small, portable consumer products by the end of 2009.

With the 45-nm generation of chips developed in NanoCMOS, Europe is in a better position to compete in the highly competitive global semiconductor industry traditionally dominated by American and Asian companies.

The project, which received funding of 24 million from the European Union, also served as the basis for the research and development of even smaller generations of chips.

The same team behind NanoCMOS has launched Pullnano, a follow-up project that will push the boundaries of chip miniaturisation even further. The researchers are currently working on a 32-nm and even 22-nm generation of chip.

Project name: NanoCMOS
Start-end date: March 2004 - June 2006
EU funding: €24m (towards total project costs of €46m)
EU initiative: Electronics, Microsystems
Project website: www.nanocmos-eu.com

Future generations of computers will be much more in tune with what humans want and need, and capable of acting on it. Anybody using a computer today has to make a conscious effort to interact with the machine. Users waste too much time and effort taming the computer instead of performing useful tasks.

European researchers on the CHIL project spent three years creating environments in which computers serve the needs of humans, creating a new paradigm of machine-supported human-human interaction. Their work is the beginning of a journey in machine evolution which ends with computers anticipating human needs and acting to meet them - a virtual butler, if you will.

In one of the largest collaborative projects ever undertaken in Europe, 15 partners from nine countries developed a range of services, technologies, new standardised architectures and evaluations.

For example, CHIL developed systems using mobile technology which could secretly send vital information to a delegate in a meeting, and provide a virtual shared workspace for all.

CHIL's achievements could fill a book, and that is exactly what is being produced in 2008. One of the 50-plus new technologies developed, 'smart-room' technology, is the subject of further research being done by several organisations, including Germany's Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, which aims to develop a user-friendly control-room system in a crisis-management scenario.

Further, a start-up company will provide a CHIL-derived service for retailers helping to analyse customer behaviour to determine, for instance, which displays are attracting attention and which are not.

Apart from the CHIL technologies already being commercialised, vast potential applications have been identified. One is SmarTrack, a real-time spatial location system for monitoring and analysing sportsmen and women which could help TV commentators and coaches.

Computer-controlled smart homes, which anticipate their occupants' every need, is also a future application of CHIL's work.

Face recognition is another area ripe for development, replacing personal identification numbers and other forms of biometric recognition like fingerprints.

Applications here include more sophisticated key-pass technology for entering buildings and improved security in electronic banking or at cash point machines, according to the European researchers in CHIL.

Project name: CHIL
Start-end date: December 2003 - August 2007
EU funding: €15m (towards total project costs of €23.44m)
EU initiative: Multimodal interfaces
Project website: chil.server.de

Building a robot with anything akin to human intelligence remains a far-off vision, but European research has led to the development of artificial cognitive systems (ACS) for robots that are more self-aware, have a better understanding of their environment and can interact more naturally with humans than previous models.

The advanced ACS developed by the CoSy project forms the technological foundation for a new generation of autonomous robots far smarter than the robotic vacuum cleaners in use in some homes or the 'gofer bots' that transport documents around some office buildings. In the future, robots with a version of the CoSy ACS will interact with and assist humans doing simple everyday chores and sophisticated tasks in home or office environments.

Research into different aspects of artificial cognitive systems has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years, but it has also become a fragmented field. Some teams have concentrated on machine vision, others on spatial cognition, or on human-robot interaction, among many other disciplines. For autonomous robots to go from the lab to the home or factory, all of these technologies need to converge.

The ACS developed by the CoSy partners overcomes this fragmentation, incorporating recent advances from fields as diverse as cognitive architecture, spatial cognition, human-robot interaction, situated dialogue processing, and developmental models of visual processing.

The CoSy team applied the results of their ACS integration in two prototypes for self-aware and interactive robots.

While most robots developed to date can merely react to their environment rather than acting in it autonomously, one of the CoSy demonstrators, the Explorer, has a much more human-like awareness of its surroundings. Through interaction with humans, it can learn to recognise objects, spaces and their uses.

The other prototype, the PlayMate, uses a robotic arm to manipulate objects in response to human instructions in another demonstration of the groundbreaking integration of machine vision, spatial recognition and human-robot interaction.

Robotics research until now has been dominated by Japanese companies, even though European researchers are at the cutting edge of many disciplines considered essential to building the autonomous robots of the future. By bringing these advances together, the CoSy team has created a state-of-the-art system for artificial intelligence, robotics, and human-robot interaction.

By making their ACS architecture toolkit available to other researchers as open source software, the CoSy team are helping to stimulate further research, bringing a future in which robots become part of our daily lives a step closer to reality.

Project name: CoSy
Start-end date: September 2004 - August 2008
EU funding: €6.2m (towards total project costs of €7.5m)
EU initiative: Cognitive systems
Project website: www.cognitivesystems.org

From special sensors that monitor a vehicle's blind spots to intelligent traffic lights, European researchers are developing a wide range of affordable technologies to prevent collisions and make road travel much safer in the future.

Smart on-board sensors combined with wireless and satellite connectivity are set to transform European road travel and create an intelligent road network.

Each year, about 40,000 people are killed in car accidents on European roads. The cost of these incidents to European society is about 2 billion per year, while the personal tragedy for friends and family cannot be measured.

But successful pilots of prototype technologies developed by the researchers show how accident rates can be slashed. Road tests and simulations show that drivers and other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists, will benefit from the added information and faster reaction times offered by intelligent technologies.

With a budget of 50 million, PReVENT is the largest road safety research project ever run in Europe. It will usher in a series of powerful road-safety systems for European cars. The project worked on developing cheap and affordable solutions to help European carmakers offer attractive models, ensuring continued growth in an increasingly price-focused market.

More than 50 partners were involved in the project consortium, including all the major European automotive and original equipment manufacturers. This strong industrial presence ensured that the research was customer-focused and market-driven. The first commercial fruits of the project should find their way into new car designs over the coming years.

More than a dozen PReVENT sub-projects have developed a host of smart technologies. On-board detection systems and sensors help alert drivers to keep their distance, to be aware of other vehicles in their blind spots, and to drive safely in poor visibility. Researchers also combined satellite navigation with wireless systems at the roadside to warn drivers of intersections, traffic lights and danger spots on the road ahead, and to update the mapping system for other users.

Advanced driver assistance systems gather information from a car's computer. Exterior detectors can anticipate problems and warn drivers of dangers - or even take control of the vehicle in an emergency.

PReVENT has also piloted vehicle-to-vehicle communication and collaboration. When cars are within range they can form ad hoc networks, share data and compute which manoeuvres should optimise traffic flows and prevent accidents.

Many of the PReVENT devices have already been piloted. The first applications are likely to appear in new cars within the next five years. Simple technologies like blind spot monitors linked to in-car warning systems will be the first on the market. The industry is also collaborating to develop the necessary standards on which car-to-car collaborative systems will be based.

The commercial success of the new technologies stems partly from careful studies of human behaviour. Research on human and system interactions has revealed how different drivers react on the roads and respond in emergencies. This work will ensure that new safety systems do not confuse drivers or lead to expensive, possibly fatal, errors.

Start-end date: February 2004 - March 2008
EU funding: €29.8m (towards total project costs of €54.17m)
EU initiative: e-Safety
Project website: www.prevent-ip.org

By using the laws of physics to encrypt data, researchers behind the SECOQC project developed a communication network that is far more secure than anything created before.

Led by the Austrian Research Centres (ARC), their work uses the properties of light transmitted over fibre-optic cables to protect data in a theoretically unbreakable encryption technique known as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

Secure communication networks using QKD will allow banks, governments, companies and citizens to safely and securely exchange information.

Traditional cryptography uses a key - a word, phrase, or sequence of numbers - to encrypt and decrypt data before and after transmission. But as computer-processing power has surged in recent years, it has become increasingly easy to crack cryptographic keys.

In contrast, quantum cryptography uses specially prepared photons, which are observed by the recipient. Since it is impossible to intercept such a light transmission without changing it, any attempt to interrupt or break into this system is immediately detectable.

The first communication network using quantum cryptography was presented in Vienna on 8 October 2008: Seven different QKD-systems produced secret keys at five locations to secure applications such as video conferencing.

In another real-world use of quantum cryptography, the project partners provided a secure line for counting votes cast in Geneva in the Swiss national elections in 2007.

Also in Vienna, the project partners completed the world's first-ever bank transfer secured with quantum cryptography by sending 3,000 over a 1.45-km fibre-optic link.

Quantum cryptography appeals particularly to certain core industries of the economy that are especially vulnerable to data theft and industrial espionage, such as banks, insurance companies and high-tech businesses. Improving data security not only helps their business but also ensures customer information is more secure.

International standards are needed to ensure broad market penetration for QKD technology. To that end, the SECOQC researchers have launched a standardisation initiative together with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

Project name: SECOQC
Start-end date: April 2004 - September 2008
EU funding: €11.3m (towards total project costs of €14.8m)
EU initiative: Secure communications
Project website: www.secoqc.net

An automated insulin delivery system developed in the CLINICIP project will help save lives by controlling hospital patients' blood sugar levels more accurately.

The innovative system calculates how much insulin a patient requires and administers it automatically, countering rapid increases in glucose levels - a frequent side effect of trauma and shock.

As with diabetes, high glucose levels can be brought down through infusions of insulin. However, in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment the changes are often more rapid, and an excessive dose of insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugar.

Hospitals frequently check ICU patients' blood sugar, but few have implemented tight controls because of the risks of overcompensating and the extra burden it places on nurses.

CLINICIP's automated system solves those problems.

The system still relies on nurses drawing blood from patients and testing glucose levels in the traditional way. However, instead of administering the insulin directly they input the glucose information into the system via a touch screen.

Specially designed software calculates how much insulin is needed before administering it to the patient.

The system alerts nurses when blood samples need to be taken, which can be as frequently as every half hour.

The researchers are also working on a fully automated, closed-loop glucose control and insulin delivery system.

By taking blood samples from the patient automatically, calculating the insulin required to bring their blood sugar to within normal levels and then administering the correct dose, the system would reduce the need for nurses to check on patients, giving them more time for other important tasks.

The overall medical benefits of the system are extensive.

The CLINICIP researchers say that using the system in ICU wards would avoid life-threatening complications in critically ill patients, improve their quality of life by reducing the length of hospital stays - an economic bonus to European health systems - and improve the work flow of medical staff.

The project team expects to launch in 2009 a commercial product based on the partially automated system, with a fully automated version likely to follow in 2011.

Several members of the project team have created a spin-off company to continue to develop and commercialise the technology.

Project name: CLINICIP
Start-end date: January 2004 - December 2007
EU funding: €7.5m (towards total project costs of €11.3m)
EU initiative: Healthcare
Project website: www.clinicip.org

Natural language processing technology developed in the SAFIR project lets users query and update databases with spoken commands alone, allowing geographic information and other data services to be accessed and used in innovative ways.

One application of the system is designed for travellers who, during major events such as the Olympics, can obtain audio information about their location or event schedules by simply speaking into their mobile phone. The system can also be used by emergency services to rapidly provide and access status reports in the event of a major disaster. Or it can be employed by public administrations and companies to keep databases and inventory information up to date.

Databases have traditionally been accessed through computer interfaces, but in many situations inputting and accessing information via a keyboard and screen is not practical.

Being able to receive and update data by speaking into a mobile phone, two-way radio or laptop microphone is typically faster and more effective for someone out in the field.

Because the technology developed in the SAFIR project eliminates the need for users to be computer literate, it will also help citizens access information that they may otherwise be unable to obtain. People without PCs, for example, could access information on e-government services through a voice-activated set-top box and then see the information on their TV screens.

The system was used during the Beijing Olympics to provide location-based information in multiple languages. It has also been trialled with fire fighters in France to help coordinate their response to forest fires, with farm inspectors in Bulgaria to keep maps of agricultural land up to date and with paramedics in the Netherlands to share patient data with hospitals.

SAFIR partners have launched private-public partnerships to establish a European Centre of Excellence in Voice Technology, based in Brussels, to commercialise the project's results. The Centre will offer services for e-government and e-business, as well as for consumers in their homes and in their cars.

Project name: SAFIR
Start-end date: March 2004 - April 2008
EU funding: €6.7m (towards total project costs of €12.19m)
EU initiative: Natural language processing, knowledge management and location-based services
Project website: www.safir-fp6.org

Optical fibres are the key to establishing 'next-generation' telecoms networks with data rates exceeding 100 Mbit/s. But the fine and fragile glass fibres are more suited to long-distance routes than domestic installations and only a few countries in the world, notably Japan and Korea, are laying optical fibre into the home on any scale. It's just too expensive.

The POF-ALL project has demonstrated that cheap and robust plastic fibres can be used to carry high-speed communications the last few hundred metres into homes and businesses, slashing installation costs. Speeds of 1 Gbit/s are already within reach with a potential of 10 Gbit/s in the future.

While the core of the European telecoms network - the long-distance trunk routes - uses optical fibre, the links from the exchange to individual homes remain almost entirely copper wire. Telecoms companies have been creative in pushing copper to its limit with DSL broadband technology and have made the most of existing TV cable infrastructure, but only by taking optical fibre right into the home can they meet the demands for ever-faster connections.

The problem is the cost. About 30% of the cost of laying fibre from the exchange to the home is taken up in the last hundred metres or so from the street to the building, the so-called 'edge' network. And this is where POF-ALL comes into its own.

Plastic fibre is cheap and robust and can be installed with simple tools and minimal training.

Plastic fibre is safer for use in homes. It uses visible light rather than the hazardous and invisible infrared light used in glass fibres.

The POF-ALL partners have achieved data rates of 100 Mbit/s with green light down a 300-metre fibre and 1 Gbit/s with red light down a 30-metre fibre - soon to be extended to 100 metres.

Italian company Luceat is already marketing an optical Ethernet switch using plastic fibre technology.

The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany is looking for partners to market an integrated optical transceiver to work at 1 Gbit/s with plastic fibre.

Until now the market for optical fibre technology has been dominated by US and Japanese firms. POF-ALL offers an opportunity for European businesses to create a niche for an enabling technology that could bring ultrafast telecoms into the home, not just in Europe but around the world.

An EU-supported follow-on project, POF-PLUS, will develop new components, modify fibre assemblies and optimise transmission techniques for speeds in excess of 1 Gbit/s over plastic fibre. The main applications will be next-generation high-speed home networking and low-cost optical interconnects in large data centres and storage area networks.

Project name: POF-ALL
Start-end date: January 2006 - June 2008
EU funding: €1.6m (towards total project costs of €2.59m)
EU initiative: Broadband for all
Project website: www.ist-pof-all.org

A sensitive and flexible robotic hand and arm controlled by intelligent software modelled on part of the human brain is being developed by researchers in the SENSOPAC project.

The scientists’ aim is to replicate the vast range of capabilities of the human hand and arm, potentially leading to robots able to perform a wide range of complex tasks that require a high degree of dexterity.

In order to achieve high sensitivity and flexibility, the researchers studied the human hand and arm and implemented software modelled on the cerebellum, part of the human brain that coordinates sensation and movement.

The researchers’ approach – known as biomimetics – is driven by the realisation that evolution has provided the human body and brain with an astonishing range of abilities.

The human arm and hand, for example, can generate a remarkable range of force, from the delicate touch of a watchmaker to the power of a javelin thrower.

Replicating that dexterity is no easy task, with robots developed until now lacking the sensing capabilities and intelligence required to handle different objects appropriately.

“[Humans] can run for hours, yet also perform very high precision tasks. If you compare that to any robot system, it’s oceans apart.” Patrick van der Smagt, c oordinator of SENSOPAC

To mimic the sensitivity of human skin, the SENSOPAC researchers created a thin carbon-filled material that changes its electrical resistance depending on the pressure exerted on it. This highly tactile material can distinguish between shape and the amount of pressure.

The arm contains 14 motors in opposing pairs, much like the pairs of opposing muscles that control each joint in a human arm, while the hand is operated by 38 opposing motors.

It can snap its fingers, pick up an egg or carry a cup of coffee.

The cerebellum-inspired software, developed by the project, provides the intelligence that allows the biomimetic hand to function. The researchers describe it as the first neural network-based controller that can command the dynamics of a robotic system in its full operational range.

The researchers’ ultimate goal is to create an intelligent controller that would allow the hand-arm system to carry out tasks requiring human-level skills in a real-world setting. It could, for example, decide to pick up a cup, sense what it contains and handle it appropriately.

Project name: SENSOPAC
Start-end date: January 2006–June 2010
EU funding: €6.5 million (towards total project costs of €8.2 million)
EU initiative: Robotics
SENSOPAC website: www.sensopac.org

Robots that interact naturally with humans have been a long-held dream of robotics researchers and science fiction writers. Now scientists working in the EU-funded JAST project have brought that dream a step closer to reality by building a robot that is able to predict and question the actions of a human partner.

By observing the human’s behaviour and mapping it against the task being performed, the robot quickly learns to anticipate errors and offer advice, even carrying out complementary actions to assist the human. In the future, such robots could collaborate with humans to perform a wide variety of tasks in industry or in the home.

The JAST team developed the robot’s predictive powers by studying the neurocognitive mechanisms that enable groups of people to coordinate activities while performing shared tasks. In the brain, so-called ‘mirror neurons’ resonate when people observe an activity as if they are carrying it out themselves. The researchers developed a robotic system that exploits this mirroring mechanism for understanding actions and selecting complementary ones.

“Our tests were to see whether the human and robot could coordinate their work… the robot is not observing to learn a task… but they observe behaviour, map it against the task, and quickly learn to anticipate or spot errors when the [human] partner does not follow the correct or expected procedure.” Wolfram Erlhagen, University of Minho

The JAST robot was tested in a variety of settings. In one scenario, the robot was the ‘teacher’ – guiding and collaborating with human partners to build a complicated model toy. In another test, the robot and the human were on equal terms. By observing how its human partner grasped a tool or model part, the robot was able to predict how its partner intended to use it and would suggest or perform a complementary action.

The robot developed by the JAST team is the first to take robotic powers of prediction and anticipation to such a high cognitive level. It represents an important step toward building proactive robots that go far beyond the current generation of automated bots that are able to vacuum your house or pour you a drink but require explicit instructions to do so.
The JAST researchers are planning to continue their research with a focus on improving the learning capabilities of their robotic system, another key element to building robots that behave and interact more naturally.

Project name:JAST
Start-end date: October 2004–December 2008
EU funding: €6 million EU
initiative: Robotics JAST
website: www.euprojects-jast.net

Researchers working in the NanoHand project funded by the European Commission have built tiny robots and ‘microgrippers’ capable of automatically picking up and installing carbon nanotubes, overcoming many of the challenges faced when handling the miniscule objects thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

The robots are expected to aid in the development of a range of new nanotechnologies and products, from high-resolution microscopes to future generations of microchips and transistors.

Because of their unique electrical and thermal properties, carbon nanotubes have enormous application potential but until now handling and installing them has been difficult because of their tiny size.
The NanoHand robots solve that problem. Each measuring about two centimetres, they are equipped with automated pincers that can pick up objects less than 100 nanometres in size. They perform their tasks inside the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope where they can be observed.

“The system makes it possible to grip micro- or even nano objects. We have handled objects with diameters down to tens of nanometres.” Volkmar Eichhorn, OFFIS

Tiny nanoscale objects are so small they literally stick to the grippers, which uses up valuable research time.
To get the robots to position and release the nanotubes, the researchers developed special automated ‘pick-and-place’ techniques which overcome the intermolecular forces (the stickiness) that are stronger than gravity at such a small scale.
Their experiments are the first in the world to use such a technique at that scale.

A key application for the robots is likely to be faster prototyping of microchips where they can be used to characterise and place nanotubes as interconnects – the fine wires that make the electrical connections – on a chip.
Another application, successfully tested by the Nano Hand team, involves using the robots to attach a nanotube to the probe of an atomic force microscope, greatly improving its ability to sense deep valleys in corrugated surfaces.

Several of the project partners are using or planning to use the NanoHand technology commercially.
STMicroelectronics intends to develop a nanorobotic system to perform rapid characterisation of carbon nanotube interconnects. Tescan and Klocke Nanotechnik, meanwhile, are collaborating to sell a scanning electron microscope equipped with a nanopositioning system.
Spin-offs to market the microrobots and microgrippers are also planned.

Project name: NanoHand
Start-end date: June 2006-May 2009
EU funding: €4.93 million (towards total project costs of €7.24 million)
EU initiative: Nanotechnology
NanoHand website: www.nanohand.eu

The ‘brain on a chip’ being developed in the FACETS project opens an avenue to revolutionise information technology by creating computers that emulate the functioning of the human brain.
Neural computing could potentially lead to powerful decision-making and data analysis tools.

In order to imitate brain functions, the FACETS team studied brain cells to find out how they work, how they connect to each other and how the brain can learn to do new things.
The work is likened to mapping the human genome, but instead of genes, neurons are being studied.

The human brain is often compared to a computer, but it differs in three important ways: it consumes very little energy, it works even if components fail, and it seems to work without any predefined software.
To find out how those properties could be incorporated into a computer, the EU-funded FACETS project brought together researchers from many disciplines, including neuroscience, computer science, physics and electrical engineering.

Frontier science
“We are now in a situation like molecular biology was a few years ago when people started to map the human genome and make the data available,” Karlheinz Meier, coordinator of FACETS.

The team’s first effort to emulate the brain was a network of 384 neurons and 100 000 synapses on a single chip. It runs 100 000 times faster than its biological equivalent and 10 million times faster than a software simulation.
The chip is capable of simulating the information input of an entire day in a single second.
A newer version already developed consists of a network of 200 000 neurons and 50 million synapses. It is implemented on eight-inch silicon wafers using wafer-scale integration technology.

With its low power demands and high fault tolerance, neural computing could be an application for molecular-sized electronics.
With nanoscale components, the FACETS researchers say their approach could lead to “amazing” increases in computer performance, even eventually going beyond the capabilities of the human brain.

The FACETS team sees practical applications of neural computing emerging within five years. The first step could be a little add-on to home PCs, a device to crunch very complex inputs into a simple decision – something like a data-intensive internet search.

In the longer term, applications for neural computers exist wherever there are complex and difficult decisions to be made. Companies could use them, for example, to explore the consequences of critical business decisions before they are taken.

Of course, more research is needed to achieve this goal. The team intends to cooperate with groups in Asia and the United States to exploit the results. Further European funding is also part of the plan.

Project name: FACETS
Start-end date: September 2005–August 2010
EU funding: €10.51 million (towards total project costs of €13.89 million)
EU initiative: FET
FACETS website: www.facets-project.org