ITEA PO Days 2019

“Mix between speed dating and a hackaton”

On 3 September, the ITEA 3 Call 6 opened with the ITEA PO Days 2019 in Amsterdam. This lively 2-day brokerage event was already fully booked weeks before and gathered a record number of 310 participants from 15 countries. With 50% returning participants and 50% newcomers, this event clearly shows the strength of the ITEA Community, which values its existing members and is open for new members at the same time.

PO Days – promising perspective

On Tuesday, 57 project ideas were presented in the poster session and 44 ideas were pitched during the parallel pitch sessions while one additional idea was even born during the event. The following brainstorm sessions resulted in 15 intermediate-results presentations on day one and 12 final-results presentations in the closing session on Wednesday.

The project ideas were clustered by 7 societal challenges, i.e. Safety and Security, Smart cities, Smart communities, Smart engineering, Smart industry, Smart health and Smart mobility. Although each challenge was well covered, the number of Smart mobility project ideas was remarkably high (14), showing the impact of this year’s ITEA Customer workshop on this topic. Another notable topic this year was Artificial Intelligence (AI), covered by 27 of the 58 ideas. ITEA’s ambition is to transform AI into impact on industry, and not just do advanced research. In addition, simulation is everywhere, leading to digital twinning; it is the heart of the digital transition and a tool for many purposes like design & optimisation, training, command & control and preventive maintenance.

A new ITEA Office Director

As Jan Jonker took over the reins as the new ITEA Office Director per 1 September, these PO Days were also an excellent opportunity to introduce Jan to the ITEA Community. He succeeds Fopke Klok who has been leading the ITEA Office since 2007. Jan Jonker made his debut on the PO Days stage and stated he’s eager to strengthen ITEA further. In this magazine, Jan also introduces himself.

ITEA best practices - Awards of Excellence 2019

During the PO Days, best practices were shown the three ITEA projects that received the 2019 ITEA Award of Excellence. They presented their impressive outcomes and impact during an interactive panel session moderated by ITEA Vice-chairman Philippe Letellier. This year’s awards winners are:

• ACOSAR specified a communication protocol, enabling efficient integration of distributed real-time systems and simulation environments. This is termed as the Distributed Co-simulation Protocol (DCP).
  
  Philippe Letellier: “ACOSAR achieved excellent results on Co-Simulation that will have a high impact on the automotive market. It is impressive how ACOSAR managed to standardise the Distributed Co-Simulation Protocol under the roof of the Modelica Association.”
  
  
• OpenCPS focused on the development of standards and open-source solutions for the integration of models from various engineering disciplines, enabling collaborative, model-based Cyber-Physical Systems development.
  
  Philippe Letellier: “OPENCPS is unique in dealing with the complexity of large Cyber-Physical Systems. The use of open standards and open-source solutions to integrate different kind of models to design complex CPS, will democratise the usage of modelisation, especially for SMEs. The good examples of exploitation, in particular with Saab and Siemens, are remarkable.”
  
  
• Reflexion has succeeded in converting data from testing and validation, real-time and continuously, into useful knowledge in order to gain better control over the production process, the product and its future design. This ‘digital loop’ is applied in several hightech system domains.
  
  Philippe Letellier: “Reflexion is particularly appreciated for the different cases of full digital loop from the design, instrumentation of products and services, data acquisition, data analysis to the feedback provided to the design team. This is actually the full path of digitalisation that ITEA is committed to. All in all, extremely remarkable results.”
  
  

ITEA congratulates all 2019 ITEA Award of Excellence winners for their impressive results with great benefit for the industry!