The European Union's Horizon 2020 EnABLES research infrastructure programme, co-ordinated by Tyndall, has recently unveiled its Transnational Access (TA) programme, which offers free-of-charge access to equipment, tools and expertise related to ‘powering the internet of things (IoT)’.
Developing energy harvesting solutions
The vision of EnABLES is to eliminate the need for battery replacement by developing energy harvesting solutions or by finding ways to reduce the power consumption of devices.
The TA programme gives academic and industry developers and integrators of IoT devices unique access to advanced research infrastructure based on the technology pillars of energy harvesting, energy storage, micro-power management and system integration.
The TA providers are Tyndall, CEA (Leti & Liten), Fraunhofer IMS, Fraunhofer IIS and
imec the Netherlands. In addition, virtual access to databases of vibrational energy sources from real life applications is being offered by the University of Perugia and the University of Southampton.
EnABLES also funds Joint Research Activities (JRAs) between the above mentioned partners along with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Politecnico Di Torino and University of Bologna. It is envisaged that the JRAs will lead to future TA offerings.
Prolonging battery life in IoT devices
The access activities can be undertaken in many ways; ranging from characterising material or devices to carrying out physical or simulated feasibility studies to see if ‘battery life’ in IoT devices can be prolonged. The potential impact of EnABLES is vast – the world will have one trillion IoT devices by 2025 most of which will require an embedded self-contained power source.
The access process is very simple, examples of offerings can be viewed on the EnABLES website and an online inquiry form is available at
www.enables-project.eu.
All outputs from the EnABLES TA and VA activities will be made openly available as part of the aim of EnABLES to build a collaborative ecosystem that creates miniaturised and autonomous sensors. EnABLES already brings together a consortium of 130 ‘powering IoT’ researchers giving access to more than €2 billion worth of research infrastructure.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
About EnABLES
The vision of EnABLES is to create ‘self-sustaining’ energy solutions to ‘power the internet of things’ based on energy harvesting, storage, micro-power management and system integration activities.
Free of charge access to simulations, data libraries, equipment and expertise access along with feasibility studies will be provided in a fast-track manner via a Transnational Access (TA) programme that will be launched shortly. It also funds Joint Research Activities (JRAs) between partners.