Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems - KK-stiftelsen

Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems
within FP7 are encouraged despite the highly competitive bidding process.
Partly to address this, AASS should work on raising its profile at the
European level. As well as investigating project funding within the standard
open calls AASS are also encouraged to investigate possibilities under the
newly launched Manufacturing Joint Technology Initiative, which has
synergies with the Swedish national priority area of production technology.
In recognizing the important role that Robotdalen plays in helping to
secure, particularly, industrial funding it is felt that the critical success
analysis should address the potential impact of Robotdalen not securing
follow on funding. This is due to the fact that this is a factor largely beyond
the control of AASS and yet could have a significant impact on its future
income stream.
In summary AASS are performing extremely well in this area and have a
secure funding base over the next 3 years together with good prospects of
securing future funding. There are however, some areas of critical success
that need further assessment. In particular:
• AASS have achieved a good level of industrial co-financing involving
both small and large industry
• The range of financing is broad and should be resilient to changes in
any one area
• The planning for sustainable financing is good and the efforts to obtain
longer term financing structures are encouraged.
• There are some actual and potential threats to the financing streams of
AASS. While AASS has a resilient structure some contingency
planning is required.
7. Information & Communication
7.1 Overarching strategy
There seems to be no overarching strategy for information and
communication, perhaps with the exception of scientific publications
(discussed previously in this report). There is a division into target groups
(audiences), but explicitly defined strategies to reach each of these specific
target groups are missing. Furthermore, the chosen division into target
groups does not always appear to be the most logical one; for instance
groups A and D each form quite a wide and disperse audience. This makes it
sometimes difficult to link media and activity choice to specific target
groups.
7.2 Media and activity choice
With the exception of activities for target group C, primary schools, the
media and activity choice seems to have been fairly ad-hoc, at least during
the reported period (during the review visit, it was mentioned that there have
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