The fourth I-MECH face -to-face meeting took place on June 3-5, 2019. The meeting was hosted by the NTIS centre of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic.
This meeting focused on two main topics: building block validation and pilot integration. Next to these topics, the programme allowed plenty of opportunities for bilateral discussions.
The first day of the meeting, building block leaders presented the progress on the I-MECH building blocks. It was inspiring to see that the ideas germinated two years ago are growing into very tangible results. Many building blocks have already performed their functions in their validation environments
and in some cases already in the final use case, pilot or demonstrator applications.
During the second day of the meeting, the pilot integration progress, both in plenary and in break-out sessions, was discussed. All the efforts were directed towards achieving successful pilot, use case and demonstrations during the review meeting in November. The meeting was used to align on expectations between building block and pilots, use cases, demonstrators. This day included a tour around various robotics-related labs at NTIS, showcasing a variety of innovative and creative research projects.
The last day was used to wrap-up the meeting outcomes and to devote some attention to the dissemination performance indicators. Now that we have created a well-working core team in the I-
MECH project, a potential of initiation of the “I-MECH 2.0” project was also discussed.
The informal part of the meeting offered some opportunities to experience some local culture, with a
visit to the world-renowned Pilsner Urquell Brewery and a dinner with live music at the Kozel Castle. Overall, it was a very fruitful face-to-face meeting with a cohesive social atmosphere.