Preparations for the EU project EUREMOTE

(sf) After more than a year's preparatory work, the heads of the 10 work packets met up in Düsseldorf on 20th and 21st October for a meeting to prepare the EU project proposal EUREMOTE (European Centre of Remote Technology). The EU-REMOTE project is being overseen by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Langmann, head of the tele-laboratory at the Department of Electrical Engineering. It intends to build up a European virtual research platform for the fast growing area of remote technology (RT) in different sectors.

Apart from a web-based, central community platform, a variety of special services are to be offered through EUREMOTE in future for users from science and industry. Examples of these include a remote learning and training centre including mobile training components and virtual tutors, different database services through to semantic search engines for storage, research and joint work in RT data collections, specialised information and knowledge services and a tool platform offering users various open source software tools to enable them to build up their own RT applications.

The project proposal will be submitted in November 2009 in Call 7 "Virtual research communities" of the FP7 work programme "Capacities". A total of 15 renowned universities, polytechnics, network organisations and institutional partners in 13 European and Latin American countries are participating in the project. Düsseldorf UAS is coordinating the project and around € 3.5 million have been earmarked to finance it.

The EUREMOTE project intends to bundle and further expand European expertise in the field of RT and articulate this on an international scale. The overriding aim of the project is to establish EUREMOTE as a leading global technology platform for the exchange of knowledge and information for remote technology.

The decisions of the EU Commission on the proposals submitted in Call 7 are expected in March 2010.