6SAVA, or "6thSense Asset Valorisation Action", is a strategic coordination support action aimed at propelling the mature outcomes of the H2020 project SIXTHSENSE to a wider market. SIXTHSENSE developed an innovative system for monitoring vital parameters of first responders in extreme environments, reaching TRL5. 6SAVA focuses on a streamlined version of SIXTHSENSE to drive the commercialization of mature assets in Republic of Serbia (RS), Croatia (HR), and Bosnia and Herzegovi, leveraging national and regional funding. This initiative empowers core SIXTHSENSE partners to capitalize on their results in the regional context. The project harnesses two distinct assets: 1) An Industry 4.0 Health Monitoring Device ensures employee safety in physically demanding manufacturing jobs, starting from cement, petrochemical, and paper industries. 2) Comprehensive IT Solution for Firefighter Operational Management, with potential for generalisation and application across the civil protection sector. The primary objective of 6SAVA is to align technology specifications with the national smart specialization strategies (S3) and needs of local industrial actors. It will result in crafting high-quality applications for national/regional funding to support advancing these technologies toward market readiness, and enhancing technology uptake within the targeted regions. This will be achieved through workshops to engage stakeholders from the industry, national institutions responsible for cohesion policy and funding, and technology innovation drivers (universities and RTO). Additionally 6SAVA will drive knowledge transfer and technological adoption in HR, RS and BA through targeted activities developed by TECNALIA, a leading European innovation center. 6SAVA's ultimate goal is to amplify the impact of SIXTHSENSE innovations, creating a positive ripple effect throughout the region's technological landscape.

The CITADELS project aims to contribute towards transforming the 7 widening countries represented in the Project into CITADELS of human-centric Industry 5.0 development. The Project brings together a consortium of 10 partners from 9 countries, including 4 large academic institutions that are highly influential within their innovation ecosystems, 3 exemplary DeepTech companies, and 1 science and technology park, where academia meets industry to make innovations happen and grow into the business. Additionally, CITADELS is supported by the 2 EU-leading partners to bring know-how in cross-sectoral collaboration, to ensure stakeholder engagement and pan-European impact (EIT Manufacturing), and to introduce a sustainable, responsible research and innovation approach (K&I). CITADELS combines the excellence of DeepTech talents and social scientists to comply with EC’s “ERA industrial technologies roadmap on human-centric research and innovation for the manufacturing sector” to ensure sustainable DeepTech careers and the progress of DeepTech. The CITADELS project seizes the opportunity presented by recent investments in advanced public R&I infrastructure and the growing demand for DeepTech expertise across Europe to combat the brain drain in widening countries. By aligning academic research excellence with industry needs, CITADELS focuses on talent circulation (20 research talents and 20 R&I support talents will be involved as a whole), creating attractive career pathways in DeepTech and building the capacity of local ecosystems to adopt cutting-edge technologies. This project will support translating research into high-value industrial applications and position widening countries as competitive players in the global DeepTech landscape. Ultimately, CITADELS will boost regional economic resilience and foster social cohesion by modernizing local industries and creating high-value jobs, driving long-term economic growth and resilience in widening countries.

Europe currently has a leading position in key digital technologies. However, functional electronics is one of several emerging digital transformation areas with no established players, but with the potential to significantly disrupt strategic sectors. Harnessing the full potential of functional electronics will enable Europe to exploit cutting-edge climate-neutral digital solutions to strengthen its leadership, and to seize on emerging opportunities by addressing existing technological gaps in multiple sectors. Functional Electronics has found application in a wide range of sectors and domains including in hybrid Integrated circuits (ICs) or flexible systems. Its global market was worth €15.4billion in 2017 and is expected to reach €37.7billion by 2023, a CAGR of 11%. Despite this growth, functional electronics can generate additional value via the adoption and implementation of new and efficient eco-design approaches at product, process, and business model levels. SusFE will advance the development of functional electronics for green and circular economy by developing a sustainable design and production platform for roll-to-roll manufacturing of the next generation of wearable and diagnostic devices that combine a SusFE toolbox of sustainable components comprising novel flexible integrated circuit (FlexIC) on polymer substrate with ultra-low power printed sensors/biosensors, and wireless communication driven by an organic and recyclable bioenzymatic fuel cell. This will lead to highly integrated and autonomously operating systems that are lightweight, environmentally sustainable, and low-cost. SusFE uses of a combination of sustainable materials and processes to deliver climate-neutral digital solutions including wound monitoring, self-blood sampling/testing and point-of-care devices.

WEARPLEX is a multidisciplinary research and innovation action with the overall aim to integrate printed electronics with flexible and wearable textile-based biomedical multi-pad electrodes. It aims to answer the growing need for user-friendly electrodes for pervasive measurement of electrophysiological signals and application of electrical stimulation. It focuses on the development of the printable electronics and manufacturing processes for stretchable textile based multi-pad electrodes with integrated logic circuits that enable a significant increase in the number of electrode pads (channels) and facilitate the creation of new products in the sectors of medical electronics and life-style. The advanced printed electronics integrated in WEARPLEX electrodes will allow the individual pads to be connected in arbitrary configurations to the output leads of the electrode. Therefore, the pads will be flexibly organized into several virtual electrodes of arbitrary position, shape and size that can be connected to any standard multi-channel recording and stimulation system. In addition, software methods will be developed for automatic calibration of these virtual electrodes, to detect stimulation/recording hotspots and adjust the virtual electrodes accordingly. Therefore, the WEARPLEX project will lead to a new generation of smart electrodes that will be able to adapt simultaneously to the user (wearable and stretchable garment), recording/stimulation scenario (movement type and target muscles) and recording/stimulation system (number of channels). This is a paradigm shift in designing the recording and stimulation systems, as the switching electronics is shifted from the custom-made stimulator/recording device to the smart electrode, leading to a universal solution compatible with any system.

TACTILITY is a multidisciplinary innovation and research action with the overall aim of including rich and meaningful tactile information into the novel interaction systems through technology for closed-loop tactile interaction with virtual environments. By mimicking the characteristics of the natural tactile feedback, it will substantially increase the quality of immersive VR experience used locally or remotely (tele-manipulation). The approach is based on transcutaneous electro-tactile stimulation delivered through electrical pulses with high resolution spatio-temporal distribution. To achieve it, significant development of technologies for transcutaneous stimulation, textile-based multi-pad electrodes and tactile sensation electronic skin, coupled with ground-breaking research of perception of elicited tactile sensations in VR, is needed. The key novelty is in the combination of: 1) the ground-breaking research of perception of electrotactile stimuli for the identification of the stimulation parameters and methods that evoke natural like tactile sensations, 2) the advanced hardware, that will integrate the novel high-resolution electrotactile stimulation system and state of the art artificial electronic skin patches with smart textile technologies and VR control devices in a wearable mobile system, and 3) the novel firmware, that handles real-time encoding and transmission of tactile information from virtual objects in VR, as well as from the distant tactile sensors (artificial skins) placed on robotic or human hands. Proposed research and innovation action would result in a next generation of interactive systems with higher quality experience for both local and remote (e.g., tele-manipulation) applications. Ultimately, TACTILITY will enable high fidelity experience through low-cost, user friendly, wearable and mobile technology.