We recently attended the launch of a new, four year Horizon 2020 RiSE Project – ReACTIVE Too – a research-focused project bringing together a unique team of academic and industrial members, promoting collaboration and interactions around the reliability of electronic devices.
As one of the six expert industrial partners, we will be working alongside six universities from Finland, France, Poland and the UK, including one of our partner institutions, Liverpool John Moores University.
The project team will develop novel tools for agile design, testing, analysing and improving the reliability of new devices in various demanding applications and environments (such as in automotive user experience, active safety applications and active and assisted living). This will help manufacturers identify and mitigate failure risks during the design stage; consequently helping to optimise reliability in all applications, moreover realise substantial design time efficiencies and cost savings.
Involvement in the H2020 ReACTIVE Too grant gives Sensor City a new platform to drive European engagement, and will allow us to host a number of academics from various European countries to exchange ideas and explore new interactions, including use of our rapid prototyping facilities.
Established on 1st February this year, the ReACTIVE Too project also presents additional opportunities for us to link our extended sensor and IoT community in with overseas networks and groups, via a series of workshops and secondments, as well as undertaking validation of the ideas generated.
While our UK partners have a track record in Electronics Assembly and Interconnections Reliability, Design for Reliability and Sensor Systems, the Finnish partners have a track record in wearable electronics, and will contribute their research in smart textiles to the team. Bringing innovative design and integration of these smart textiles into the challenging environments of automotive and care homes, will enhance driver information and ambient assisted living.
The project team is privileged to have French partners undertaking world-leading research and production of unique devices in energy harvesting. Further innovation in ReACTIVE Too will bring novel flexible energy harvesters for integration into many sensors.
Industrially leading work is planned to be led by Polish partners to investigate the possibilities of applying AI, deep learning and prognostics to future electronics systems. These innovations should allow a unique assessment of long term reliability and shorten development cycle times, saving energy and money.
The project, which is led by Professor Ndy Ekere (a Professor of Manufacturing Engineering with the School of Engineering at the University of Wolverhampton) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant agreement No 871163.