Too late for the webinar? Please contact us at SINTEF to request a link to a recording of the webinar: Claudio Paliotta and Aksel A. Transeth.

Note that this webinar is mainly intended for Norwegian businesses. If your business is located in a different country then please check www.rimanetwork.eu for relevant events. 

What is the RIMA network?

RIMA stands for Robotics in Inspection & Maintenance.

Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) represents a huge economic activity (450 Bn€ market) spanning across sectors such as energy, transport and civil engineering. EU hosts over 50% of I&M robotics offer but there is a bottleneck connecting it to the market and high potential applications. RIMA is a 4-year project aiming to establish a network of 13 Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) on robotics sharing best practices and providing services to facilitate uptake of I&M technologies. Our consortium is made up of universities, industry associations and research institutes. Our challenge is to reinforce this connection and to provide education and training on robotics I&M and to connect the value chain - research, technology companies, service providers, end users and investors - for accelerating economic growth in the field.

What is the second RIMA call for proposals?

RIMA will support Robotics Innovation Experiment (RIE) which includes developing, testing and validating the technical and economic viability of a robotic system prototype to be demonstrated in an operational environment.

There are several good reasons why SMEs or slightly bigger companies (up to 2x the size of a SME) should apply to the 2nd call:

• if you are a Technology Developer you have the opportunity to bring your innovative technology closer to the market (from TRL 5 to 7),
• if you are a Services/Product Provider in the field of Inspection and Maintenance for Infrastructures you can develop new products or services or to innovate the existing ones,
• if you are a System Integrator you have the opportunity to enlarge your application field,
• as a micro-consortium you can receive financial support up to € 150K for innovative proposals,
• you can find complementary companies among Technology Developers, Service/Product Providers and System Integrators to develop your innovative business together,

the RIMA consortium will assist you free of charge during the execution of your experiment with Technical Services (consultancy, lab facilities etc), Business Services (organisation, finance, ethics, legal etc.) and Mentoring Services to facilitate a smooth path to bring your innovation onto the market.

More information about the call will be available at this link.

Why to join the webinar?

The webinar will guide interested companies towards the application to the call. This the second RIMA call for proposals and the objectives of the webinar are:

• clarify the RIMA network tasks and the way the RIMA networks aims to support start-ups and SMEs in the I&M field;
• clarify the purposes of the RIMA call for proposals and explain what the intention with financing experiments is to validate technologies in the I&M sector;
•  clarify the guidelines and the modality for the application to the second RIMA call for proposals.

The webinar will be open for questions from the attendees. We expect 30-40 minutes for presentation and the rest for questions.