RIMA NETWORK ALLIANCE

Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) represents a large economic activity spanning across multiple sectors such as energy, oil&gas, water supply, transport, civil engineering and infrastructure. There is massive potential for robotic applications, to increase productivity and improve safety, but the total market size of robotics is still negligible in relation to the overall market size.

Currently EU is a global leader in this rapidly growing field with more than half of all manufacturers of I&M robots based in Europe. EU hosts over 50% of I&M robotics offer but there is a bottleneck connecting it to the market and high potential applications.

RIMA (Robotics for Inspection and Maintenance) was a 4-year project aiming to tackle this gap by establishing a network of 13 Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) and industry associations to support the uptake of robotics – and help small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) to develop novel solutions for different industry sectors. RIMA was funded by European Union’s Horizon2020 initiative.

To continue the achievements of the RIMA project, the RIMA partners have formed a RIMA Network Alliance. The alliance is a sustainable structure that aims to promote knowledge creation and transfer between its member and the value chain arounf them.

Benefits of joining the alliance:

– Make use of the synergies between its Members
– Organise dedicated workshop series
– Encourage collaboration such as joint research actions between its Members and third parties
– Encourage publications, including joint publications, between its Members
– Propose education and training actions and foster secondment between its Members
– Propose state of the art studies
– Identify stakeholders and their needs to foster creation of new skills and competence to answer those needs
– Work to propose a coordinated access to realistic inspection infrastructures
– Work on organising and providing services through the Member in a coordinated manner
– undertaking activities to support policy makers including EC and professional associations
– actively promote best practice in its domains of interest by developing new guidance documents
•Increase the visibility and acceptance in the research community active in the field
– underpin regulation and standardisation through research, knowledge transfer and services
– Work on gaining international leadership and recognition
– Establish a comprehensive, longer-term infrastructure to respond to the needs

– Support knowledge-transfer, uptake, and industrial exploitation

The RIMA Network Alliance welcomes Digital Innovation Hubs, Sectorial Associations and Facilitators to join.