The EU-funded COREGAL project combines traditional positioning technology with reflected global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals to let land management professionals see through thick tree canopies and better understand what lies on the forest floor. Not only is Brazil a large country but much of it is covered by the dense Amazon rainforest. Trying to manage such a rugged and isolated area using traditional mapping, surveying and land m...

The EU FIGARO project has completed the development of a precision agriculture Decision Support System, allowing growers to benefit from innovative developments in irrigation technology. The system aims to substantially improve irrigation management for high water-consuming crops, including potatoes, citrus fruit and maize. It achieves this by increasing water productivity and optimising the use of irrigation water and energy consumption.

EU-funded researchers have studied and piloted a variety of ITS to ascertain which will best improve the safety, comfort and mobility for vulnerable road users (VRUs). The EU has a target of halving road fatalities by 2020 and figures released by the European Commission show that there were 26,000 fatalities and 135,000 serious injuries on EU roads in 2015, with a combined cost of around €100 billion (rehabilitation, healthcare, material dam...

  EU researchers have shown how small nanotech particles suspended in a liquid separate out by size as the liquid evaporates, an effect that can lead to techniques for making layered structures that improve the performance of many everyday products, such as sun cream and electronics.

Humanitarian organisations like the Red Cross have sleeping emergency response units (ERU), which start acting immediately after disaster strikes. Each ERU has a specific function, e.g. medical care, sanitation, energy provision, or water supply. Current equipment solutions will be scanned and bottlenecks with respect to large volumes and/or heavy weight will be identified. Then, novel materials and concepts will be developed to drastically reduc...

The EU TREASORES project has created flexible lighting foils produced in a roll-to-roll method that could hold the potential for the large scale production of low-cost LED lighting panels and solar cells. The project set out to find innovative solutions and develop new technologies to reduce the manufacturing costs of LED lighting panels, solar cells, and other organic electronic devices.

The transportation industry has for a long time been engaged in the application of new lightweight materials for primary structural design. In aeronautics, where the weight of an aircraft is a crucial factor for fuel consumption, composite materials are now replacing metallic materials in both structural and non-structural parts. The railway industry could also benefit from the use of structural new materials.

The EU-funded COLUMNARCODECRACKING project has successfully used ultra-high fMRI scanners to map cortical columns, a process that opens the door to exciting new applications, such as brain-computer interfaces. Cortical columnar-level fMRI has already contributed and will further contribute to a deeper understanding of how the brain and mind work by zooming into the fine-grained functional organisation within specialised brain areas.

The EU-funded CRE-AM project, which held its final conference in Brussels on 23th February 2016, has built a vital bridge between the European creative industries and the ICT sector to foster new technologies, tools and policy initiatives. The project has provided a number of recommendations and roadmaps, and constructed several stakeholder-focused online platforms, that aim to encourage the EU's future ICT R&D agenda to develop new tools tha...

A cost-effective method of fabricating high quality light-emitting fibres could benefit sectors ranging from sensors to wearable smart devices. EU-funded researchers have developed a new method for manufacturing fibres made from nanostructured organic materials. The breakthrough could lead to the cost-effective fabrication of light-emitting fibres at the nanoscale that can be used in sensors and bio-sensors, for energy harvesting (i.e. solar pane...

The platform, designed for city planners, industry and energy stakeholders, assesses and maps buildings' energy behaviour, and can also remotely control public street lighting. The platform has already succeeded in cutting energy use in several cities across Europe where it has been tested. In Ferrara, Italy, about €2 million was saved in energy certification costs for 10,000 buildings. Overall there were total savings equal to around €...