Rail freight transportation is a system service where a multitude of players, participants and systems providers bear a high degree of responsibility for its attractiveness and performance. It shows high efficiency as transportation means, in terms of land use and energy consumption and low greenhouse gas emissions. However rail’s market share of freight transportation and its economic efficiency continues to be limited. Aimed at overcoming such uncertainty, this project addresses one of the most important key resources for further developing rail freight transportation: the optimization of the performance of the rail freight wagon. The continuous pressure on environmental issues and energy efficient transport is forcing the rail transportation sector to enhance the rail logistics services and to incorporate innovative solutions to improve load capacity to keep the “best-in-class” position and, therefore, acquiring a much privileged position beyond alternative terrestrial transport source, as truck transportation. Thus, aimed at optimizing rail freight transportation, the main objective of this project is to holistically address the aspects that may improve freight wagon performance: enhanced logistics, improved multimodal operative, higher load capacity, optimized filling/emptying time and flexibility to transport multi-products. This project aims to achieve such optimization by combining industrial expertise on the freight wagon design and construction, advanced materials for lightweight construction and logistics with the research capabilities to incorporate innovation solutions and optimize material performance.

Ship recycling refers to the disassembly of a ship in recycling facilities, as well as the storage and processing of these materials to reuse them. The ship recycling industry enables the reuse of raw materials for industrial purposes, and thus is fully in line with the European Circular Economy Action Plan and Green Deal objectives. Yet, in addition to work-related diseases due to toxic substances, unacceptably high levels of fatalities and injuries at current shipbreaking yards makes ship recycling one of the most dangerous occupations in the world (ILO 2015). Besides, due to the lack of proper waste management, toxic waste from shipbreaking contaminates the coastal areas and exposes the workers to hazardous substances. Although international regulations exist to reduce and prevent the adverse effects of ships on human health and the environment (IMO 2009; UNEP 2011; Regulation EU No 1257/2013), improving the safety and health of workers and stopping the detrimental impact on the environment still remain major challenges of the sector. The main objective of SHEREC is to enable the involvement and adoption of innovative robotics, data and AI systems into the ship recycling industry to significantly improve the occupational health and safety conditions in this industry and to prevent contamination of hazardous materials both at occupational and environmental levels. Specifically, SHEREC will (1) semi-automate the preparation process in ship recycling using an AI-powered drone inspecting the interior of the ship to locate hazardous materials on the ship, (2) create an automated ship recycling plan using a digital twin of the ship and AI-based planning methods, and (3) automate the cutting and paint removal processes in ship recycling process using two innovative mobile robotic systems that can work autonomously or via tele-operation.