FELICE aspires to design the next generation assembly processes required to address urgent needs in manufacturing. It unites multidisciplinary research in robotics, AI, computer vision, data analytics, process optimization and ergonomics to deliver a modular platform capable to integrate and harmonize an array of autonomous and cognitive technologies aiming to increase the agility and productivity of an assembly production system and also ensure the safety and physical and mental well-being of human workers. To achieve these goals, technologies will be developed combining the accuracy and endurance of robots with the cognitive ability and flexibility of humans. Such flexible and configurable technologies will support future manufacturing assembly floors to become agile, and address Industry4.0 adaptation. We consider two layers of operation, control and processing, a local one introducing i) a collaborative assembly robot roaming the shop floor to assist workers in assembly tasks, and ii) adaptive workstations for optimizing worker-specific ergonomic aspects, and a global layer which will sense and operate upon the real world via an actionable digital replica of the physical assembly line. FELICE will i) implement perception and cognition capabilities allowing the system to build context-awareness, ii) advance human-robot collaboration in otherwise manual assembly lines, enabling robots to safely and ergonomically share tasks with humans, allowing the flexible reconfiguration of an assembly production process and, iii) realize a manufacturing digital twin, i.e. a virtual representation tightly coupled with production assets and the actual assembly process to enable the management of operating conditions, the simulation of the assembly process and the optimization of performance aspects and, iv) integrate developments in an industrial assembly line for agile production. FELICE has two pilot environments: one for technology validation and one related to car assembly.

5G-ERA is oriented towards a user-centric paradigm of integrating vertical knowledge into the existing standardised 5G testing framework to improve Quality of Experience (QoE). The project addresses the new challenges on experimental facilities for the vertical developers and designers through the following activities: 1) integrating operational processes of essential autonomous robotic capabilities into Open Source MANO (OSM), ensuring the vertical specific adaptation of existing experimentation facilities, 2) realising an intent-based networking paradigm by aligning the end-to-end (E2E) resource optimisation with the autonomous operations, ensuring effective policy to be designed 3) Cloud native Network Services (NSs) on the experimental facilities will create, ensuring robotic applications exploiting NFV/SDN infrastructures efficiently, 4) extending the experimentation facilities into robotic domains thorough standard APIs under Robot Operating System (ROS), prompting third-parties’ experimentation activities as well as engagement from new players. Robot autonomy is essential for many 5G vertical sectors and can provide multiple benefits in automated mobility, Industry 4.0 and healthcare. 5G technology, on the other hand, has the great potential to enhance the robot autonomy. Use cases from four vertical sectors, namely public protection and disaster relief (PPDR), transport, healthcare and manufacturing will be validated in the project by rapid prototyping of NetApp solutions and enhanced vertical experiences on autonomy. These case studies can be regarded as showcases of the potential of 5G and 5G-ERA to the acceleration of the ongoing convergence of robotics, AI & cloud computing; and to unlock a next level of autonomy through 5G based learning in general.