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EnABLES Launches its Transnational Access Program for Powering the IoT

August 15, 2018 by Paul Shepard

The EU H2020 EnABLES research infrastructure program, co-ordinated by Tyndall, has just launched its Transnational Access (TA) program, which offers free-of-charge access to equipment, tools and expertise related to ‘powering the internet of things (IoT)'. 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 program 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.

EnABLES Coordinator, Mike Hayes, Tyndall at launch of Transnational Access Programme

The access activities can be undertaken in many ways; ranging from characterizing 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 1 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 enquiry form is available here. 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 miniaturized and autonomous sensors. EnABLES already brings together a consortium of 130 ‘powering IoT' researchers giving access to over €2Bn worth of research infrastructure.

Funders:  This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 730957.