Digital Innovation Hubs

Description

The Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) is one of the leading technical
universities of Central Europe. The Department of Electron Devices (BME-EET) is a worldwide
recognized research organization in the field of thermal and electro-thermal issues in
microelectronic devices. The Department deals with all aspects of microelectronics, from
semiconductor physics through device manufacturing to system level design.

Being a member of the SAE community and the National Industry 4.0 Platform, BME-EET provides the following actions as a non-profit Digital Innovation Hub:

• Helps SMEs, start-ups and mid-caps to become more competitive through the adoption of latest digital technologies.
• Provides access to infrastructure for physical and environmental testing digital innovations, with additional domain specific expertise in a couple of technical fields
• Provides access to a broad network of local SMEs and service providers in Hungary and Central Europe

Contact Data

Coordinator (University)

BUDAPESTI MUSZAKI ES GAZDASAGTUDOMANYI EGYETEM
http://bme.hu/en

Year Established

2015

Location

Infopark, Magyar tudósok körútja 2, Building Q, section B, 3rd floor, 1117, Budapest (Hungary)

Website

https://dih.eet.bme.hu/

Contact information

Ferenc ENDER PhD
ender@eet.bme.hu
+3614632720

Contact information

Gabor TAKACS PhD
takacs@eet.bme.hu
+3614632720

Contact information

Prof. Marta RENCZ
rencz@eet.bme.hu
+3614632702

Technologies

• Micro/nano electronics
• Sensory systems
• Photonics and imaging technologies
• Cyber physical systems
• Internet of things
• Simulation, modelling and digital twins
• Additive manufacturing
• Internet services

Link to national or regional initiatives for digitising industry

BME is located in the Central Hungary region, in Budapest, Hungary. The RIS3 strategy of Central Hungary (CH) is the key policy document for regional development for the period 2014-2020. Four sectors were identified that are bound to become the engines of regional innovation-based growth: ICT, health industry, environmental technologies, and creative industries. The horizontal objectives of the strategy include the greening of the economy, the enhancement of innovation collaborations and awareness raising. As a DIH, BME-EET is well connected to RIS3 strategies, especially to the targeted development of the R&D sector with a special emphasis to digitalisation.

In those fields BME-EET participated in 20+ European projects strengthening its competence in the field of Info Communication Technologies (ICT) such as:

• EuroCPS  funded by the Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) initiative, where BME-EET acted as a competence centre to facilitate innovators-suppliers cross-border partnerships, which accelerates innovation by providing technical, industrial and innovation management expertise
• FED4SAE funded by the Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) initiative, aiming to enable the digitalisation of product and services of both tech and non-tech innovative Start-ups, SMEs and Midcaps from any sector,
• Smart4Europe, a SAE project aiming to reinforce the collaboration between projects supported under the SAE Initiative
• Delphi4LED, related to BME-EET’s domain specific expertise e.g. in solid-state lighting.

BME is part of the presidency of the Hungarian Industry 4.0 National Technology platform, through which it can reach all the active Hungarian SMEs in all Hungarian regions.

The Hungarian Industry 4.0 National Technology Platform was established under the leadership of the SZTAKI Research Institution of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA-SZTAKI), with the participation of research institutions, companies, universities (including BME) and professional organizations having premises in Hungary, and with the full support and commitment of the Government of Hungary, and specifically that of the Ministry of National Economy.

• Hungarian Industry 4.0 National Technology Platform: https://www.i40platform.hu/en

BME has also very good relationship with the following entities and regional networks:

• INNOREG, the regional Innovation Agency of Central Hungary.
• Pannon Business Network
• Software Innovation Pole cluster
• Connected and Automated Mobility Cluster of Zala
• IQ Kecskemet DIH

Market and Services

Customers

Number of customers annually

6-10

Type of customers

Start-up companies

SMEs (<250 employees)

MidCaps (between €2-10 billion turnover)

Research organisations

Partners

• DIGITAL CATAPULT
  Research & Technology organization
  
• THALES SA
  Large enterprise
  
• INTEL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IRELAND LIMITED
  Large enterprise
  
• BLUMORPHO SAS
  Incubator/accelerator
  
• CSEM CENTRE SUISSE D''ELECTRONIQUE ET DE MICROTECHNIQUE SA - RECHERCHE ET DEVELOPPEMENT
  Research & Technology organization
  
• AVL List GmbH
  Large enterprise
  https://www.avl.com/
• UNIVERSIDAD DE CANTABRIA
  University
  
• FRAUNHOFER Portugal
  Research & Technology organization
  https://www.aicos.fraunhofer.pt/en/home.html
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology
  University
  https://www.kth.se/
• ST Microelectronics
  Large enterprise
  https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en.html
• CEA Leti
  Research & Technology organization
  
• Mentor, a Siemens business
  Large enterprise
  https://www.mentor.com/products/mechanical/micred/

H2020 Projects

• EuroCPS
  European Network of competencies and platforms for Enabling SME from any sector building Innovative CPS products to sustain demand for European manufacturing

  European Network of competencies and platforms for Enabling SME from any sector building Innovative CPS products to sustain demand for European manufacturing

  
  

  SMEs play a key role in European economies; they constitute the largest business block and provide the bulk of employment. They generate most of the innovative ideas for ICT and CPS-enabled IoT products, two areas which represent an inflection point for innovators and industry in Europe.  
  EuroCPS is an ambitious project that aims to arm Europe with a network of design centres that will boost and initiate synergies between SMEs, major CPS-platforms, and CPS-competency providers, to capture the emerging markets for IoT products.
  
  EuroCPS will
  1. Leverage the existing regional ecosystem across the full value chain (from micro-electronics, smart systems, and CPS, to high value added products and services) and range of expertise and competencies to provide innovators from any sector with an easy path to build innovative CPS-enabled systems.
  2. Act as a one-stop-shop that provides a critical mass of technologies and competencies by facilitating user-supplier partnerships across value-chains and regions. Hence the typical development time of innovative for CPS applications will be significantly decreased through the ease of access to the platforms, and coaching by the competence partners within EuroCPS.
  3. Link software, system and nano-electronic industries along the full CPS value chain to demonstrate a new cooperation model evidenced by experiments initiated and led by innovators that translate the rich pool of ideas from end users into implementation of CPS applications made in Europe.
  
  EuroCPS gathers major European system suppliers and world class research centres and technology providers, all rooted in the top European regional ecosystems. Based on strong foundations in European and national initiatives, EuroCPS will, through pan European collaboration and knowledge exchange and access to the strong value chain in this strategic sector, significantly reduce development time and certification efforts, thus putting Europe at the cutting edge of CPS development and implementation.
  

• SMARTER-SI
  Smart Access to Manufacturing for Systems Integration

  Smart Access to Manufacturing for Systems Integration

  
  

  Over the last decade, development of Smart Systems Integration (SSI) has demonstrated tremendous benefits in terms of enabling new functionalities of diverse products contributing to enormous economic potential with annual efforts in Europe estimated at approx.10 b€. There is significant opportunity for innovative SME’s to further exploit SSI as they are ideally placed to commercialise and drive the whole product development cycle, effectively bridging the “valley of death”. Europe is in a strong position to champion its’ established RTO’s competitive research, development and production facilities and to be a World leader in transitioning product development in SSI from prototyping to manufacturing, with particular focus in the low volume high value chain domain. SMARTER-SI has a unique opportunity to capitalise on Europe’s research excellence in SSI, leverage expertise of SME’s and RTO’s and drive impact through commercial exploitation.
  Inspired by the Strategic Research Agenda of EPoSS, SMARTER-SI aims to develop a RTO Community Foundry Model (CFM) that will accelerate a wider deployment of SSI with greater access to design, manufacturing capabilities for prototyping, early validation and first production for SME’s to exploit in niche markets. A strategic objective is to lower entry barriers using the cooperative approach of utilising existing process steps/building blocks available at partner RTOs. This in turn will advance innovative products for SMEs in Europe. The system approach will enable these companies to reach for a higher profit margin than currently achievable with components sales. SMARTER-SI will thus facilitate a greater level of innovation and know-how that will reside within Europe and will be difficult to replicate by competitors in other regions for the manufacture and production of similar products.  SMARTER-SI is designed to be a test bed to realise 10 Application Experiments through the CFM that will trigger a bigger action, e.g. in ECSEL.
  

• GateOne
  GateOne - Innovation Service for European Smartization by SMEs

  GateOne - Innovation Service for European Smartization by SMEs

  
  

  GateOne’s mission is to accelerate smart systems adoption by European SMEs in facilitating their access to advanced technologies for the development of innovative and smart solutions. GateOne offers Innovation as a Service to the benefit of SMEs in structuring a complete and adapted innovation chain to contribute to the Smartization of Europe. The concept is based on an innovative and pragmatic approach to cross the valley of death. Our Innovation Action is designed to enter efficiently into a new management paradigm in implementing critical size mechanisms. We will work on a unique Pan European portfolio of smart systems technologies to make them attractive and available for evaluation by a large panel of European SMEs. 20% of the portfolio will be related to bioelectronics technologies.  In implementing the New Product Introduction process, our service will provide a collaboration framework between SMEs and RTOs, to progress from Lab to Market. From a complementary smart systems technologies portfolio we will work on 50 small scale projects to deliver innovation concept in the form of demonstrators. They will be produced at the only condition that an SME expresses interest and engages to enter into a testing phase.  Our innovation service will allow low risk evaluation conditions. We will introduce “product concept” designed on a business case to meet SMEs expectations. We will structure, an adapted innovation chain, while validating the cost efficient manufacturability of the solution.  A broad diffusion will make GateOne a European entry point of state-of-the-art technology for smart systems.Inherited from COWIN CSA success and commitment of RTOs to further apply and develop the COWIN approach, GateOne will lead to a major breakthrough for European competitiveness in engaging SMEs in the smartization wave. The support of the European Commission will validate the concept and prepare its sustainability with RTOs, industrials and private investors support.

• TETRAMAX
  TEchnology TRAnsfer via Multinational Application eXperiments

  TEchnology TRAnsfer via Multinational Application eXperiments

  
  

  The major objective of TETRAMAX is to provide an implementation of the European “Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)” initiative in the domain of customized low energy computing (CLEC) for CPS and the IoT. The project builds on three major activity lines: (1) Stimulating, organizing, co-funding, and evaluating different types of cross-border Application Experiments, providing “EU added value” via innovative CLEC technologies to first-time users and broad markets in European ICT-related industries, (2) Building and leveraging a new European CLEC competence center network, offering technology brokerage, one-stop shop assistance and CLEC training to SMEs and mid-caps, and with a clear evolution path towards new regional digital innovation hubs where needed, and (3) Paving the way towards self-sustainability based on pragmatic and customized long-term business plans. The project impact will be measured based on well-defined, goal-oriented performance indicators. The immediate ambition of TETRAMAX within its duration is to support 50+ industry clients and 3rd parties in the entire EU with innovative technologies, leading to an estimated revenue increase of 25 Mio. € based on 50+ new or improved CLEC-based products, 10+ entirely new businesses/SMEs initiated, as well as 30+ new permanent jobs and significant cost and energy savings in product manufacturing. Moreover, in the long term, TETRAMAX will be the trailblazer towards a reinforced, profitable, and sustainable ecosystem infrastructure, providing CLEC competence, services and a continuous innovation stream at European scale, yet with strong regional presence as preferred by SMEs.

• Smart4Europe
  Catalysing Digitisation throughout Europe

  Catalysing Digitisation throughout Europe

  
  

  The project Smart4Europe responds to ICT-04-2017, Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) Initiative, scope b), Coordination and Support Actions. In recent years innovation in products and services is to an increasing extent based on digitisation. Prominent examples are consumer products like smart phones, autonomous driving, Industrie 4.0 etc. Digitisation enables enhanced or new functionalities in most products and services. A key question is “How to optimise the transformation of this potential?” Especially SMEs need an easy access to digitisation technologies. Here SAE will help by pooling different offers in a one-stop-shop.
  The concept of Smart4Europe is to serve SAE at three levels:
  • the Commission
  • projects aligned to SAE and
  • all parties interested in SAE, with a focus on SMEs and mid-caps.
  
  The ultimate goals of Smart4Europe are to provide support in:
  • reinforcing the collaboration between projects supported under SAE
  • increasing their outreach and impact
  • providing wide coverage of stakeholders in technological, application, innovation, and geographic terms.
  In order to achieve this, Smart4Europe will expand an existing website to create an Innovation Portal, provide a service centre; facilitate brokerage; coordinate communication and dissemination activities; help in sharing best practices and experiences; create a Technology Radar to identify technologies SAE can benefit from; and last but not least, establish links to regional/national initiatives to leverage investments and stimulate growth.
  Smart4Europe is driven by a strong consortium of partners that have already demonstrated their commitment and engaged for several years in shaping the SAE Initiative. Under the SAE umbrella there will be a growing number of projects, focusing on different technology domains and positions in the innovation cycle – Smart4Europe will include all of them, bringing together the community, helping it to grow organically and catalysing digitisation throughout Europe.

• FED4SAE
  Federated CPS Digital Innovation Hubs for the Smart Anything Everywhere Initiative

  Federated CPS Digital Innovation Hubs for the Smart Anything Everywhere Initiative

  
  

  The overall ambition of the FED4SAE innovation action (IA) is to boost and sustain the digitization of the European industry by strengthening competitiveness in Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and embedded system markets. In alignment with the "Smart Anything Everywhere" initiative goals, FED4SAE will:
  - Create a pan-European network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) by leveraging existing regional ecosystems across full value chains and a range of competencies. DIHs will enable both tech and non-tech innovative Third parties (Startups SMEs, Midcaps) from any sector to build new products and services with “digital inside”.
  - Act as a European added-value one-stop-shop to facilitate innovators-suppliers cross-border partnerships which will accelerate innovation in products and processes of European Third parties by providing technical, industrial and innovation management expertise. This will lead to quantifiable increases in market shares, productivity, industrial capacities of the Third parties, and a broader adoption of CPS and embedded systems solutions.
  - Link innovators to investors associated to DIHs to reach out to further funding opportunities and enable the next steps of the Third parties’ developments after completing their application experiments (AEs).
  - Ensure the self-sustainability of the DIHs pan-European network by developing cooperation with regional organizations and key stakeholders engaging public and or private investment to fund FED4SAE network activities.
  FED4SAE is built upon the key learnings obtained in the EuroCPS, Gateone-project, CPSE Labs IAs. FED4SAE will leverage the best practices related to Third party engagement, submission, evaluation and selection of AEs. FED4SAE will give birth to a competitive ecosystem where European Startups, SMEs and Midcaps will thrive as they access to leading technology sources, competencies and industrial platforms and also to well-connected business infrastructures and existing regional innovation hubs.
  

• TRINITY
  Digital Technologies, Advanced Robotics and increased Cyber-security for Agile Production in Future European Manufacturing Ecosystems

  Digital Technologies, Advanced Robotics and increased Cyber-security for Agile Production in Future European Manufacturing Ecosystems

  
  

  The main objective of TRINITY is to create a network of multidisciplinary and synergistic local digital innovation hubs (DIHs) composed of research centers, companies, and university groups that cover a wide range of topics that can contribute to agile production: advanced robotics as the driving force and digital tools, data privacy and cyber security technologies to support the introduction of advanced robotic systems in the production processes. The result will be a one-stop shop for methods and tools to achieve highly intelligent, agile and reconfigurable production, which will ensure Europe’s welfare in the future.  The network will start its operation by developing demonstrators in the areas of robotics we identified as the most promising to advance agile production, e.g. collaborative robotics including sensory systems to ensure safety, effective user interfaces based on augmented reality and speech, reconfigurable robot workcells and peripheral equipment (fixtures, jigs, grippers, …), programming by demonstration, IoT, secure wireless networks, etc. These demonstrators will serve as reference implementation for two rounds of open calls for application experiments, where companies with agile production needs and sound business plans will be supported by TRINITY DIHs to advance their manufacturing processes. Besides technology-centered services, primarily laboratories with advanced robot technologies and know-how to develop innovative application experiments, TRINITY network of DIHS will also offer training and consulting services, including support for business planning and access to financing. Services of participating DIHs and dissemination of information to wider public will be provided through a digital access point that will be developed in the project. Another important activity of the project will be the preparation of a business plan to sustain the network after the end of the project funding.

• DigiFed
  Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) federation for large scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs

  Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) federation for large scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs

  
  

  DigiFed’s main objective is to encourage the adoption of advanced digital technologies by EU SMEs with a focus on non-digital businesses. DigiFed implements a business plan for the sustainability of the federation of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs), while providing significant support mechanisms for individual and groups of SMEs to foster the introduction of digital technologies in their product and service offerings. DigiFed aims to engage at least 200 SMEs and midcaps from all across Europe in its innovation programme. At least 80 of these will receive also funding support and benefits from one of Digifed’s innovation pathways- half of these will be businesses with low digital maturity.
  DigiFed’s business model is based on collaborative investments with fair return for contributing parties, realised by our ability to reduce innovation risks and generate new business opportunities. DigiFed leverage both funding from private sector and public co-funding from regions of DIHs, in order to maximise value from EU investments. These will be used for the development of truly differentiated and impactful digitization solutions targeting the needs of different markets, penetrating the value chain down to non-technology companies.
  DigiFed focuses on Cyber Physical and Embedded Systems with a particular attention on security and privacy, autonomy and human-machine interaction. Its innovation pathways offer two main instruments: Generic Experiments target a group of mainly non-tech SMEs to implement advanced technology demonstrators with co-funding from regional authorities; Application Experiments allow individual SMEs to define an R&I project to disrupt, upgrade or manufacture an innovative digital product or service.
  DigiFed gathers 6 DIHs from different countries with established ecosystems and will continue expanding and linking with other DIHs and DIH networks through its lifetime to create a truly EU-wide offering of sustainable cross-border DIH services.

• SMART4ALL
  SELFSUSTAINED CROSS BORDER CUSTOMIZED CYBERPHYSICAL SYSTEM EXPERIMENTS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AMONG EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERS

  SELFSUSTAINED CROSS BORDER CUSTOMIZED CYBERPHYSICAL SYSTEM EXPERIMENTS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AMONG EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERS

  
  

  SMART4ALL builds capacity amongst European stakeholders via the development of selfsustained, cross-border experiments that transfer knowledge and technology between academia and industry. It targets CLEC CPS and the IoT and combines a set of unique characteristics that join together under a common vision different cultures, different policies, different geographical areas and different application domains.  SMART4ALL brings a new paradigm for revealing “hidden innovation treasures” from SEE and helping them to find the path to market via new, innovative commercial products. As part of its strategy, the project will develop and maintain an active network of DIHs across SEE for supporting academics, start-ups, SMEs, and mid-caps entering the digitization era. The mechanisms for achieving this are the design and implementation of 88 cross-border PAEs that will be executed by the consortium members and by 3rd party consortia (academics, companies and mid-caps). The latter will be supported via well-defined regular open calls and will have a day-by-day coaching by SMART4ALL consortium for boosting the research ideas to successful products. PAEs will be actively supported by SMART4ALL DIH cluster throughout and after their execution. The targeted application areas are domains that are not adequately represented in current SAE projects and include digitized environment, digitized agriculture, digitized anything and digitized transport. SMART4ALL introduces also the concept of marketplace-as-a-service (MaaS) that acts as one-stop-smart-stop of SMART4ALL DIH cluster for offering tools, services, platforms based mainly on open sources technologies as well as technology suppliers-adopter matchmaking capabilities customized to the four thematic pillars of the project. Finally, SMART4ALL plans horizontal activities that will support the Digital Skills Agenda of EC and the support of sensitive social groups via ideas and products that have significant impact on their lives.

• PhotonHub Europe
  One-Stop-Shop Open Access to Photonics Innovation Support for a Digital Europe

  One-Stop-Shop Open Access to Photonics Innovation Support for a Digital Europe

  
  

  PhotonHub Europe will establish a single pan-EU Photonics Innovation Hub which integrates the best-in-class photonics technologies, facilities, expertise and experience of 53 partners from all over Europe, including the coordinators of EU pilot lines and local photonics hubs representing 18 regions, as a one-stop-shop solution offering a comprehensive range of supports to industry for the accelerated uptake and deployment of photonics. PhotonHub will provide European companies, in particular “non-photonics” SMEs and mid-caps that are first users and early adopters of photonics, with open access and guided orienteering to the following key support services: training and upskilling opportunities within PhotonHub’s Demo and Experience Centres throughout Europe and enhanced by digital tools for online learning; “test before invest” innovation support capabilities to engage with companies on highly collaborative Innovation Projects aimed at TRL acceleration from prototyping (TRL3-4) to upscaling (TRL5-6) to manufacturing (TRL7-8), and complemented by targeted business and IP advisory supports; and support to find investment through investment-readiness coaching and investor match-making organised in collaboration with major regional and European venture fora and deep tech Investor Days. PhotonHub will uniquely support cross-border innovation activities of European companies, while simultaneously working closely with the local photonics hubs to develop and roll out best practices of the “lighthouse” regions for ongoing regional financial support of SME innovation activities and to support the creation of new innovation hubs covering most regions of Europe. Finally, PhotonHub will fine-tune and implement its business plan for long-term sustainability in the form of the PhotonHub Europe Association as a durable entity which is deeply rooted within the wider ecosystem of local, regional and EU-DIHs for maximum leverage and impact on European competitiveness and sovereignty.