• Published on 11 May 2016
• External News

ARTEMIS Promo tour

Visit to TNO-ESI symposium

On April 19 TNO-ESI held its 2016 Symposium. One very interesting keynote was on Industry 4.0, given by Dieter Rombach, Director of Fraunhofer IESE, the Fraunhofer institute for software and systems engineering methods. In a very concise way he explained the focus of IESE on Software-Intensive Systems and Digital Transformation. Digital Transformation should not be mixed up with Automation, he explained. Digital Transformation is based on networking of things/entities and services. Both vertically (from Internet of Things to Internet of Services) and horizontally (across value chains), resulting in a smart ecosystem, enabling new business models and huge opportunities regarding efficiency and quality.

Instead of the static solutions designed during development, we now move to dynamic solutions that adapt and optimise autonomously during runtime. Industry 4.0 encompasses not only Smart products, but also Smart production and Smart services that will be the source of new revenue streams, start-ups and spin-offs. Next to other challenges he explored some of the engineering challenges to make this all happen. All in all this was a very inspiring keynote speech.

Visit to Net Futures 2016

Against all odds still many participants found their way in Brussels through strict security to Net Futures 2016 at the location The Egg. Also the ARTEMIS-IA office visited the event which was organized by Start-up.be and the European Commission.

The programme opened with a presentation of EC Vice-President Andrus Ansip on how the EU is planning to create a connected digital single market by e.g. investing €500 million in a pan-EU network of digital innovation hubs, where businesses can obtain advice and test digital innovations. Much attention in all presentations was paid for infrastructures to enable cloud-services.

The plenary session was followed by various parallel sessions of which a very interesting presentation on “the World of ICT standards” given by Patrick Guillemin of the standardisation H2020 organisation ETSI, providing interesting perspective on the interoperability issues and how they deal with information and communication standards supporting emerging IoT related Technologies. By running “Plugtest” events, engineers have the opportunity to evaluate the interoperability of their products, vendors to promote their technology and standards can be enhanced in quality by validated tools. ETSI supports the AIOTI (Alliance for IoT innovation) Standardisation workgroup with landscape analysis, dissemination and community building.

Besides the parallel sessions there was an exhibition in which many different pure-networking-oriented projects were presented, with even projects for extreme situations as for example at sea or under-water. Moreover, much support for start-ups and SME’s was offered to develop services build on such infrastructures. By this, a breeding ground for new business is thoroughly shaped and nurtured.

In the closing session by Mr. Oettinger, he presented his strategy for the Digitisation of Europe and emphasized the importance of coordination of large R&D&I efforts in key digital technology fields in order to deliver on industry's needs.

Result of the ARTEMIS office visiting this 2-day event is a membership of AIOTI (therefore a better link with the IoT community) and through our connection with Start-up.be a possibility to include more start-up activities in our future ARTEMIS events

Visit to iMinds The Conference 2016

Digital Transformation is a hot topic, but there are as many solutions as there are issues. iMinds The Conference 2016 was all about digital transformation and disruptive trends challenging global economy and society. The programme included expert talks on IoT, Big Data, Digital Manufacturing and Digital Trust. Danny Goderis (CEO at iMinds) opened the Conference with a very interesting presentation pointing out the opportunities of hardware and software working together in a blended smart world. With cooperation and exchange of data the issue of trust in business critical application was a subject which needs attention. A very surprising insight in the “The Dark Net” was given by Jamie Bartlett, author of the book with the this title. He showed an incredible hidden network of encrypted sites and anonymous web users.. Bartlett examined what this means for users and showed some of the lessons learned, opportunities and challenges it gives. Also a very informative presentation, during the plenary session “Data-driven economy”, was the one of Toon Vanagt (data.be & lex.be) about a variety of business opportunity of unlocking the value of open data with open source tools and API's. He closed his talk with an invitation to check out local open data portals as they can provide valuable information for you.

The pink-coloured exhibition floor showcased 58 demos including the latest iMinds research projects as well as potential tech start-ups supported by iMinds. Research projects from “games for children” to a Start-up “Prevent Industrial Downtime”.