The BEMO-COFRA project had its first year review on 14 November 2012 in Birlinghoven, Germany. The consortium presented the achievements and results obtained in the first year of the project and gave a demonstration of the initial prototype platform. Using a toy car, train tracks and two dummy robots, the Body Welding and Assembly Line in a car manufacturer was simulated to demonstrate the interaction between the BEMO-COFRA platform and the BWA Line.

In this first edition of the BEMO-COFRA newsletter you can read about how wireless cameras will be used as sensors in the project, about dependability issues in WSANs, and about a visit to FIAT in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. You will also find a list of completed deliverables, some of which are already available for download. Other public deliverables will be released once they have been approved by the EC following the project's first year review meeting in November 2012.

BEMO-COFRA partners met up at VTT premises in Oulu, Finland, at the end of August 2012 for a full day of integration of the various BEMO-COFRA technologies. The individual technological components were thoroughly tested by simulating the events and actions that occur in an actual car manufacturing Body Welding and Assembly Line.This included a testing of the railway actions and using a dummy robot to test robot and PLC actions. Camera events were similarly tested using a camera dummy, and the wireless sensor for gripping, the Plugwise events and the User Interface events were also tested. Finally, all the different components were integrated to allow a demonstration of the entire event chain of a Body Welding and Automation Line.

On the 12 and 13 April 2012, the Brazilian partners visited the Fiat production plant in Betim, Minas Gerais, Brazil, to learn more about the complex automotive industry. More specifically, BEMO-COFRA partners were interested in gathering more knowledge and information useful for the project’s research and development work.

Of particular interest was the car manufacturing line and its automated processing stages, which were described and demonstrated by the staff working on the production line and the Line Manager. The BEMO-COFRA partners were thus able to study the main components of the manufacturing process and the interaction between them. These observations will be used to feed into the project’s work in developing an infrastructure for monitoring different devices through wireless links.

The BEMO-COFRA project has produced a brochure for public dissemination. The brochure highlights the main aims and objectives of the project, and it gives the reader a good general insight into the project. The brochure exists in both an English and a Portuguese version and it can be found in the download section here.

The BEMO-COFRA project had its first intermediate review on 21 March 2012. The purpose of the review, a so-called light technical review, was to assess whether the project is working well and in the right direction. In addition to BEMO-COFRA's Project Officer, one Brazilian and one European expert reviewed the five deliverables that have been produced during these first 6 months in the project. All deliverables were approved and the set milestones have been attained successfully. Based on the results thus far, the review concluded that the BEMO-COFRA project is indeed successful.

As one of five selected projects for co-funding by the EC and Brazil, BEMO-COFRA was invited to a EU-Brazil workshop in Brasília on 7th November 2011. The workshop had two main objectives: 1) to celebrate the launching of the 1st Coordinated Call projects, and 2) to prepare the ground for the identification of topics for the 2nd Coordinated Call. The Brazilian State Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation, Mr. Virgilio Almeida, and the Director for Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures of the Directorate General for Information Society and Media, EC, Mr. Mario Campolargo, gave the opening speeches. They both stressed the importance of the Brazil-EU cooperation and their hopes for future innovative joint projects that will create new technologies, new knowledge, and new business opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic.

The kick-off of the BEMO-COFRA project in Recife, Brazil, attracted the attention of the biggest newspaper in the state of Pernambuco, the Jornal do Commercio, since it is the first Brazil – European Union project of its kind. An article in the Economic section was published with the headline “Software will create new industrial technology” and goes on to say “Innovation: A CIn (Informatics Centre at University of Pernambuco) and European Union project will enable energy savings in manufacturing plants as well as a cleaner, wireless and noise-free environment.”

The Kick-off meeting for BEMO-COFRA was hosted by the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife. Eight representatives of the five European partners and seven representatives of the four Brazilian partners met for two days to discuss and plan the work that will be carried out in the BEMO-COFRA project. After the successful Kick-off meeting, the work in BEMO-COFRA is now well underway.