The team of the Smart Mini Factory laboratory for Industry 4.0  is one of the participants of the first ESMERA challenge (http://www.esmera-project.eu/challenges/). In its first Open Call, ESMERA offered eight industrial challenges addressing real-life problems in four challenge areas: Energy, Manufacturing, Construction and Agri-food. The Smart Mini Factory participates together with the Lead Partner Carretta srl from Treviso in the Manufacturing challenge. The focus of the proposed project, named WIRE COBOTS, was the development of a robotic solution to improve the productivity as well as ergonomics of a wire harness assembly at the company Elvez in Slovenia.

The prototype developed by the WIRE COBOTS team (https://vimeo.com/384975028)  passed the competitive evaluation of the  expert committee. The WIRE COBOTS project will advance on Phase 2 of ESMERA Project and will receive  € 125 000 of funds for the improvement and  industrialization of the developed prototype.