ABOUT THE PROJECT
If a company can find the right place to test its inspection and maintenance technology in days rather than months, safer and smarter infrastructure reaches the public sooner and helps European innovators.
OPTIMI is a European Horizon funded initiative to building a free-online catalogue so that any company can quickly find the right places to test its technology.
SINTEF coordinates the OPTIMI consortium, bringing together INESC TEC, CEA, Tech Hive Labs and Quasset to deliver the project.
Drawing on the five partners' complementary expertise, OPTIMI will map facilities and user needs, engage stakeholders, co-design and test improved services and business models, develop the online catalogue, and turn the evidence into a European roadmap that identifies investment priorities and supports a sustainable network of testing facilities for the future.
THE CHALLENGE
Bridges, wind farms, pipelines and rail networks all need regular checking and repair. New tools such as drones, robots and AI can do this faster and more safely, but the companies building them struggle to find somewhere to test and prove their technology before selling it.
Europe has excellent test facilities, but they are scattered, hard to find and hard to compare. OPTIMI is bringing them together: we are mapping these facilities, finding out what users need, and building a free online catalogue so that any company can quickly find the right place to test its technology. The aim is to cut the time and cost of getting new inspection and maintenance tools out of the lab and into use.
GET INVOLVED
Everything we produce — the map of Europe's test facilities, the online catalogue, the recommendations we make to funders — is shaped by conversations with the people who will use it. Get in touch now to help shape what we build.
If you are developing robotics, sensing or AI for inspection and maintenance and struggling to find somewhere to test it, tell us what you need, please contact us so we can factor it into what we build.
If you run a lab or test site that could support inspection and maintenance technology, contact us to be listed in the catalogue and reach the companies looking for exactly what you offer.
PARTNERS
The OPTIMI consortium brings together five organisations from five European countries: SINTEF (Norway), CEA (France), Quasset (Netherlands), INESC TEC (Portugal) and Tech Hive Labs (Greece).
SINTEF's role
The project is coordinated by SINTEF, which also leads the work on understanding what users need and runs the stakeholder group and workshops behind it. SINTEF brings long experience in robotics and AI for inspecting and maintaining critical infrastructure.
Funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement nº 101293804. The dissemination of results herein reflects only the author’s view, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.