HORSE aims to bring a leap forward in the manufacturing industry proposing a new flexible model of smart factory involving collaboration of humans, robots, AGV’s and machinery to realize industrial tasks in an efficient manner. The main strategy builds on existing technology and research results in robotics and smart factories and integrates them in a coherent and flexible software framework.

This action proposes to bring together potential public buyers, suppliers of innovation (with a special focus on SMEs and start-ups), and potential investors and researchers, with a view to determine projects suitable for public procurement of innovation.

The lack of trusted and secure platforms and privacy-aware analytics methods for secure sharing of personal data and proprietary/commercial/industrial data hampers the creation of a data market and data economy by limiting data sharing mostly to open data.

The challenge is to provide a sustainable ecosystem of robotics stakeholders covering the entire value network to facilitate and accelerate a broad uptake and integration of robotic technologies, and supporting the digitisation of industry through robotics.

Breakthrough education and training paradigms for continuous training of the existing workforce are needed, that will enable the European industrial workforce to develop new skills and competences in a quick and efficient way. This should put workers, both women and men, at the forefront of innovation and drive industry towards a smooth transition to the use of increasingly sophisticated machines and new technologies.