• Published on 08 Nov 2012
• External News

La Défense provides the futuristic backdrop to share a vision for ICT innovation at the Co-summit 2012

The visionary architectural landscape of La Défense, bathed in morning sunlight and casting a stunning futuristic backdrop to this fifth Co-Summit, perfectly complemented this year’s theme of the event. ITEA and ARTEMIS reflected their common ambitions through an exhibition floor of fascinating projects, a walk of fame, a special focus area section on reliability, star performers, inspiring keynote speakers and challenging debates. Jointly opened by Klaus Grimm (President of the ARTEMIS Industry Association) and Rudolf Haggenmüller (Chairman of ITEA 2), the Co-summit was welcomed to the French capital by Cécile Dubarry, Director for ICT at the Ministère du Redressement Productif.

 Keynote speaker Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO of ATOS, gave an inspirational and challenging address. A man willing to take risks – something many might term visionary – already evident in his controversial decision to implement ISDN during his term as Director of France Telecom, he boldly asserted that internal e-mails would be a thing of the past in his present company by the end of next year. This example of not only the speed of change but the intrinsic kind of change that is taking place in our society would be echoed in the panel session that followed. “We are a society that is not undergoing evolution or revolution but a metamorphosis.” It is a time to be visionary and now, more than ever, it is a time for ARTEMIS and ITEA 2 to share a vision for ICT innovation.

 Knowing and not knowing

Taking up this theme, the stage gave way to a panel discussion hosted by Emile Aarts, formerly Chief Scientific Officer at Philips Research and now Professor of Computing Science at Eindhoven University of Technology. This very lively debate, featuring five prominent players from different fields, was inspiring and gave the captivated audience plenty to think about. For instance, when asked ‘What did you not anticipate?’ when looking back on the impacts of technology during the past twenty to thirty years, panellist Heinrich Daembkes, Vice President of System and Software Engineering at CASSIDIAN, answered: the spectacular impact of social media – the size and speed at which it happened. Even more revealing by implication, then, is what it is we don’t know about what will happen tomorrow. The three parallel sessions in the afternoon – EIT ICT Labs, Vision 2030 Living Roadmap/Repository and Reliability (also the special focus area of this Co-summit) – pursued these and other relevant questions.

 Throughout the day and indeed the following day, the exhibition floor allowed plenty of opportunity to look at how the future was already happening now in the ARTEMIS and ITEA 2 projects and, of course, gave the project representatives the chance to share insights with their colleagues from other projects. Guided tours also gave all projects the chance to present the impact of their work to various guests. This real community, family spirit once again underlined the value of such an event. The day closed, appropriately, with a dinner at the Ô restaurant on the banks of the Seine.  

Community at work

The Wednesday morning, although less sunny on outside, nonetheless continued to be a glittering display of innovation and achievement in the CNIT conference centre as ARTEMIS kicked off the day with a brief retrospective by Executive Director of the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking, Eric Schutz, in which he put the spotlight on the ARTEMIS projects before introducing a fascinating discussion in which four panellists were very capably moderated by Dr. Irene Lopez de Vallejo on the theme of healthcare and manufacturing automation. One of the questions – how the panellists interpreted the concept of ‘think big’ – drew different responses such as that from Andrei Lobov (e-Sonia project) who suggesting that ‘think open’ could be another way of phrasing the notion while Mladen Berekovic (R3-COP) emphasised the ambition of developing a large, knowledge-based tool design platform to provide solutions. The ‘big’ for Frank van der Linden (High Profile) centred on the cross-domain aspect and Silvio Bonfiglio (CHIRON) saw the ‘big’ in terms of projects having critical mass and societal impact. An interesting remark on this ‘big’ issue came from Andrei Lobov who cited the essential participation of SMEs as a driver of innovation and a key to the value chain. The challenges are evident but so is the progress being made in meeting those challenges and making significant inroads to really improve the quality of our lives. In presenting the ARTEMIS Recognition Awards, Eric Schutz turned the spotlight once again on the people who were responsible for making ARTEMIS such a success. Recipients were:

• CAMMI – adaptive cognitive man-machine interfacing and human-centred communication
• CESAR – Reference Technology Platform to reduce development time and effort by up to 50%
• CHARTER – concepts, methods and tools for the development, verification and certification of critical embedded systems
• CHESS – building languages to model and evaluate extra-functional properties as component contracts
• eDIANA – multi-purpose framework to enable the building sector to optimise energy consumption
• EMMON – research, testing and development of a functional prototype for large-scale wireless networks
• iLAND – enabling technologies for modular, component-based middleware
• INDEXYS – cross-domain instantiation of GENESYS embedded system architecture
• pSHIELD – pioneering investigation to address security, privacy and dependability in embedded systems context
• SCALOPES – enabling the evolution of low-power, multi-core computing platforms
• SMART – creating an innovative low-power wireless video-capable sensor network infrastructure
• SOFIA  - making information in the physical world available for smart services in embedded and ubiquitous systems
• SYSMODEL – developing supportive modelling tools to enable SMEs boost performance and reduce time to market.

With the twelve beaming prize winners taking the plaudits on stage, Eric Schutz stressed that these stars were just twelve of the stars in the ARTEMIS heaven, proudly announcing that “Every project is a star”.

The Co-summit exhibition award prizes based on votes cast by participants for the best and most understandable projects went to the ITEA DIAMONDS project and the ARTEMIS R3-COP project. DIAMONDS also won this award in Helsinki last year, so it was unique feat for this project that is developing a new, model-based approach to software testing with applications in multiple industries – such as banking, transport and telecommunication. Three young enthusiastic demonstrators of the R3-COP stepped up to receive the award for their project that addresses robotic autonomous systems in domains like surveillance and rescue, agriculture, people care, home environments and transport.

Happiness and fun

The final afternoon of the Co-Summit was devoted to innovative engineering as Gérard Roucairol, President of Teratec, challenged four panellists to confront this very inspiring subject for the research and innovation community. Such as the extremely different lifetimes of software and the products in which software constitutes a vital embedded element. Or the growth of ‘multi-X’ dimensions of software and systems engineering. With demand for the three essential ingredients of software-intensive systems and services – safety, security and reliability – continuing to increase, innovative engineering was a very pertinent topic for this final debate.

Serious though such challenges are, both Rudolf Haggenmüller and Eric Schutz underlined in their joint ambitions that there should be plenty of scope for happiness and fun; sometimes hidden but essential ingredients in the innovation mix and certainly central to the wonderful atmosphere that pervaded this very successful Co-summit. The closing address was presented by Dr Charlotte Brogren, Director General of the Swedish governmental agency for innovation systems, VINNOVA. Pointing to the Swedish tradition of ICT innovation and world leading companies like Ericsson, she looked forward to the Co-Summit 2013, which will be held in Sweden in December.

Rudolf Haggenmüller and Eric Schutz reiterated the happiness and fun that underlie the two programmes. And as proceedings drew to a joyful close, thoughts were already turning to Stockholm and yet another milestone along the path of this successful partnership.