ESMERA opens €200,000 competition to fund small businesses developing robotics solutions

The EU funded robotics project ESMERA – the European SMEs Robotics Applications – has opened its second open call to help fund small businesses developing robotic solutions for enterprise applications.

Within that call, industrial end-users have defined specific challenges that are to be solved by introducing a robotics solution.

The challenges come from the areas of manufacturing, energy, construction, agriculture, food processing, retail, healthcare and emergency response.

Until December 2nd, European SMEs can now apply to solve one or more of these challenges by developing a robotics application and receive funding of up to €200,000.

SMEs can propose a project, so-called experiment, on their own or form a small consortium, teaming up with R&D organizations or other companies that can supplement their activities.

ESMERA asks for handing in proposals aiming to develop innovative robotic technologies.

Such technologies may involve but are not limited to, fully/nearly autonomous robots or human-robot collaboration applications and should be able to be demonstrated in real-world scenarios.

ESMERA offers direct financial support to the solution-providing SMEs, through a cascade funding mechanism.

On top, the core ESMERA partners will provide the beneficiaries with an environment for developing, evaluating, testing and demonstrating novel robotic technologies, alongside with non-technical mentoring and support.

The solution design and evaluation will be carried out in two competitive phases. In phase I, the best experiments need to prove their concept. Phase II makes winners advance in Industrial Leadership and Business Support.

The ESMERA core partners will help the winners on their path from idea to a final product ready to go to market. Phase I offers funding of up to €75,000, Phase II another €125,000 per experiment.