The Human Brain Project: Open Call for the application of Functional Architectures

Interested in the application of functional cognitive architectures to address AI and automation problems with a special emphasis on vision? The Human Brain Project (HBP) launched an Open Call for the Expression of Interest! The total call budget is EUR 1,000,000 (direct costs). Maximum funding per proposal can reach EUR 500,000 (plus 25% Indirect Costs), with two proposals to be selected!

Application deadline: 16 October 2020, 17:00 Brussels time

The successful applicants will engage in collaboration with HBP Partners who will provide techniques and models supporting a number of cognitive functions including planning, decisions making, scene understanding and contextual awareness. Activities will involve the specialisation of developed functional techniques to allow addressing real-world AI and automation problems of industrial and commercial relevance. Special emphasis is placed on scene understanding, in support of safe man-machine interaction in an industrial robotics setting (cobotics). However, the pursued qualities of robustness and generalisability lend the technology relevance to a wider range of problems, including robust scene understanding in safety-critical applications, planning and decision making for unmanned mobile systems, with applications to monitoring and surveillance. The aforementioned list of possible application examples addresses the sectors of industrial robotics, mobile robotics, automotive, and agri-food. The expected objective of the activity involves the development of mature, real-world solutions (not lower than Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5, ideally up to TRL7), building upon HBP-developed brain-based technology.

It is expected that applying consortia will include a partner from the industry, who will actively drive the problem definition. In addition, consortia should include a designated partner leading the technical work involved in specialising the developed technology to the considered problem, in the perspective of achieving the desired maturity level. Proposals with budgets of up to EUR 500,000 should be able to address the defined scope (two proposals will be selected). As successful consortia are expected to directly include the technical expertise necessary to raise the maturity of developed solutions, HLST support is not anticipated.