The RETURN project uses eco-friendly liquid salts and low-energy electrochemical processes to recover >99% of the metals contained in waste PCBs panels. It utilises digital recognition, assessment and sorting, working in parallel with Digital Product Passport systems and a Dynamic Digital Marketplace to return recovered or repaired components and materials to EU markets. The impact is maximised by commercially attractive circular or closed-loop recycling of e-waste with facilities located directly into existing recycling centres at low investment levels. Sustainability and techno-economic viability assessments are built into all stages, assisting decision making and contributing to commercially useful performance and sustainability data to support post-project exploitation.

Specific raw materials become increasingly important to manufacture high level industrial products. Especially electronic equipment contains precious metals and a series of strategic raw materials. To date the material specific recycling is focused on mass stream concepts such as shredder processes and metallurgy to extract the high-value metallic constituents, i.e. copper, gold, silver. However, a series of critical elements cannot be recovered efficiently or is even lost in dust or residual fractions. The goal of ADIR is to demonstrate the feasibility of a key technology for next generation urban mining. An automated disassembly of electronic equipment will be worked out to separate and recover valuable materials. The concept is based on image processing, robotic handling, pulsed power technology, 3D laser measurement, real-time laser material identification (to detect materials), laser processing (to access components, to selectively unsolder these; to cut off parts of a printed circuit board), and automatic separation into different sorting fractions. A machine concept will be worked out being capable to selectively disassemble printed circuit boards and mobile phones with short cycle times to gain sorting fractions containing high amounts of valuable materials. Examples are those materials with high economic importance and significant supply risk such as tantalum, rare earth elements, germanium, cobalt, palladium, gallium and tungsten. A demonstrator will be developed and evaluated in field tests at a recycling company. The obtained sorting fractions will be studied with respect to their further processing and recovery potential for raw materials. Refining companies will define requirements and test the processing of sorting fractions with specific material enrichments. An advisory board will be established incorporating three telecommunication enterprises.

APRIL project aims at implementing and deploying market oriented, low cost and multipurpose robots that supports semi-automatic tasks in manufacturing production lines that use flexible or deformable materials in industries of any size or domain. APRIL will use fine grasping, innovative computational vision technology, gathering of sensors’ information, as well the development of modular and different middleware layers and interfaces. APRIL will provide innovative sensoring and computational vision supporting detection of slips, estimate weight, dynamic center of mass, or regulating grasping forces while manipulating deformable objects of different types (e.g. paper, chicken breast, shoes’ insoles, viscoelastic textile materials, cables, etc.). A federated approach, wireless communication, usage of multipurpose hands and placement of various sensors, will connect all robots to a cloud based knowledge base that will contain the needed information to perform the different jobs. APRIL system will be deployed in six different demonstration use cases across Europe. Robots integrated in the manufacturing processes will operate on several critical steps that affect production, packing and quality assurance on the different manufacturers involved as pilot sites. On one hand, introduction of APRIL system will produce an expected increase on safety and related health conditions of working environments. On the other hand, APRIL will enable an increase on productivity and quality of the final products; thus leading to a greater competitiveness of European industry. The project will be implemented in 40 months by 15 partners from 8 European countries.

The VOJEXT project aims at providing a favourable business and technological framework to enable matchmaking and encourage producers and adopters (mainly SMEs including small crafters) of Cognitive autonomous systems for human-robot interaction, specially “cobots”, dynamizing science-driven industry approaches for the European industry. For this purpose VOJEXT will design, develop, validate and demonstrate affordable, market-oriented, agile, multipurpose and easy-to-repurpose, autonomous, mobile and dexterous robotic systems as the main component of a smart, agile and scalable cognitive CPS for industry; under the vision of providing Value Of Joint EXperimenttion (VOJEXT) in digital technologies to manufacturing and construction industry; while having DIHs as drivers of innovation based economic development in Europe. t VOJEXT will demonstrate its value by deploying the solution through a 42-months work plan scaling the project to at least 5 additional different markets; starting with 5 experimental pilots (and 9 SMEs) in the plastic textile, electronics, automotive, construction and creative architecture for urban regeneration, VOJEXT cover traditional and non-traditional areas for AI-robotics and cognitive ICT developments; aiming to extend to 15 experimental pilots, integrating 20 more SMEs through open calls. The open calls will foster scientific and business driven innovation together Digital Innovation Hubs led by UPM-AIR4S (Spain), together with other 3 DIHs – Fortiss (Germany), PIAP (Poland) and EMC2 (France). These Open Calls will gather the most innovative SMEs, that will bring new challenges into project’s pilots and propose alternative scenarios. Moreover, the project will carry out with 2 S+T+ARTS residencies, that will allow artists stimulate the creation of new product in different contexts and support creative craft experimental pilots in Italy. DIHs will create a new niched oriented offering based on VOJEXT technical areas and for crafting sector.

REMHub project proposal will create a cutting-edge digital innovation hub propelling EU excellence for Rare Earth Elements (REEs ) and magnets. REMHub will develop test and pilot novel technologies for exploration and primary production of rare earths and recovering rare earths from side streams to enhance supply security of REEs in EU. In addition, Re-X (Recycle, Reuse, refurbishment and repurposing) technologies for rare earths and valuable metals from end-of-life products as well as electric machine design for easier permanent magnet recycling will be developed. The project will also identify and engage relevant stakeholders for developing REE value chain in EU. In addition, in the innovation hub will ensure that the novel technologies developed in the project will be commercialized and offered as services in a digital platform. The project will also have dynamic communication and dissemination with the aim to involve and engage the public to develop trust and awareness related to REEs as well as to build capacity in EU. The hub targets transformative material sourcing for REEs and REE magnets, including traceability, digital twinning, and digital passport. The project partners cover the entire REE value chain starting from mineral exploration, through mineral processing and refining to metal production and magnet making as well as recycling. The project incorporates safe and sustainable by design framework (SSbD) including design for Re-X (recycling, re-use, refurbishment, repurposing) approach integrating easy dismantling and circularity properties. REMHub will significantly improve the supply security of REEs in the EU and with the digital innovation hub considerably accelerate the development of technologies and services to faster and easier market entry.