INNOVATION

Sustainability describes the potential for long-term maintenance of the well-being of humans and our environment. As we create, design and manufacture globally increasing volumes of electronic products, the sustainability of scarce and critical resources for new electronic products as well as the treatment of electronic waste becomes critical. However, the notion of sustainability for electronics is mostly driven by energy efficiency during product manufacturing, and a significant percentage of electronics does not end up in the appropriate waste stream at all.

The main goal of the GreenElec project is to significantly improve on resource efficiency of electronics. This is accomplished by designing and manufacturing electronics that enable more effective recycling in cooperation between manufacturers and recyclers. Three electronic product categories are used as carriers: LED lamps, consumer televisions and professional display systems

Cloud4all is an international project funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union that will advance the concept of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII). The GPII is a project of ‘Raising the Floor Consortium’, industry and non-governmental organizations and individuals. Cloud4all will develop key parts of the GPII, building the knowledge base and algorithms needed and evaluating the ability of the concept to work across platforms, technologies and applications. Cloud4all/GPII aim at the following objectives:

• Simple Instant accessibility for all;
• Anywhere Any Device Access;
• Supply and Demand better connected;
• Affordable method to offer diversity needed.

More: Twitter @Cloud4all7FP

DALIA (Assistant for Daily Life Activities at Home) will provide an integrated home system that supports older adults as primary end-users, offers support to their informal carers as secondary end-users, and can be extended to interface with services of formal care and medical services.
More: Twitter @DALIA_AAL

The goal of the ‘Empathic Products’ project is to achieve better user experience by applying affective computing technologies to understand user intentions and emotions. To achieve this, the project will:

• Define scenarios and case studies covering a great variety of possibilities for empathic products;
• Develop a toolbox with validated and packaged components for intention and emotion awareness as well as empathic feedback provision;
• Integrate a number of empathic applications and services;
• Evaluate and validate the empathic products in pilots with real users;
• Study the business potential for the various empathic products;
• Develop a design methodology for empathic products.

The FallRisk project designs and develops non-stigmatizing, holistic services in view of the automated follow-up of fall risk and the multi-sensor and contextual detection of fall incidents at home. For elderly people, fall incidents are often life-changing events that might lead to degradation or even loss of autonomy.

More than half of the elderly living in a nursing home and about one third of the elderly living at home fall at least once a year, denoting the high prevalence of falling. Of those who fall, 10 to 15% suffer severe injuries. The lack of timely aid can lead to further complications, e.g. dehydration, pressure ulcers and even death. Although not all fall incidents lead to physical injuries, psychological consequences are equally important (fear of falling, losing self-confidence and fear of losing independence).

Due to the high impact of falling, both fall prevention and reliable fall detecting are necessities. To support this, technologies in ‘closing the loop’ from the elder at risk towards the (in)formal caregiver network need to be optimized in view of the changing demographics (more elderly people, fewer caregivers).

SAM develops a Social Media delivery platform based on 2nd Screen and Content Syndication.
Instead of users reaching for media-related content, it is the content that finds the users 2nd Screen through SAM’s syndication approach.

More: #secondscreen

More than 3 million tons of waste from electric and electronic products are collected in EU25 every year, and it is foreseen to grow significantly due to upcoming mandatory collection and recycling targets. They contain enormous tonnages of secondary raw materials, which are, depending on recycling technology applied, recovered partly at low efficiency. In many cases, industrial metals and critical materials are irrecoverably lost. Therefore, CloseWEEE has gathered a competent consortium from 7 EU countries to improve existing technologies and practice. CloseWEEE targets following main topics:

• Increase the recovery yield of WEEE-plastics (PC-ABS and PPE-PS) up to 80%;
• Provide high quality plastics and integrate up to 20% in virgin fractions;
• Recover up to 80% of BFR (Brominated Flame Retardants) and Antimony;
• Improve significantly the recovery yield of Li-Ion battery materials, specifically premium quality graphite, Cobalt, Nickel and Copper.

HD²R is researching ways to optimize the viewing experience by using a higher dynamic range of colors, contrast and brightness. To that end, the project will carry out pioneering experiments to achieve the optimal and reliable visual quality, conversion and color correction of HDR images. HD²R is studying all aspects of the imaging chain, from the camera to screening in the cinema or in the living room. Ongoing research includes close cooperation with university project partners from iMinds (research groups VUB-ETRA, UGent-MICT, UGent IPI, UGent MMlab).