Arrowhead is addressing efficiency and flexibility at the global scale by means of collaborative automation for five application verticals. That means production (manufacturing, process, energy), smart buildings and infrastructures, electro-mobility, and virtual market of energy. For this research project, Develco Products develops integration between demand response and heat pumps and helps to develop software functionality, so different communication protocols can wirelessly communicate to each other.

New dynamic interaction between energy players

Our society is facing both energy and competitiveness challenges. These challenges are tightly linked and require new dynamic interactions between energy producers and energy consumers, between machines, between systems, between people and systems, etc.

Cooperative automation is the key to these dynamic interactions and is enabled by the technology developed around the Internet of Things and Service Oriented Architectures.

The objective

The objective of the Arrowhead project is to address the technical and applicative challenges associated with cooperative automation:

• Provide a technical framework adapted in terms of functions and performances
• Propose solutions for integration with legacy systems
• Implement and evaluate the cooperative automation through real experimentations in applicative domains: electro-mobility, smart buildings, infrastructures and smart cities, industrial production, energy production and energy virtual market
• Point out the accessible innovations thanks to new services
• Lead the way to further standardization work

The strategy

The strategy adopted in the project has four major dimensions:

• An innovation strategy based on business and technology gap analysis paired with a market implementation strategy based on end users priorities and long-term technology strategies
• Application pilots where technology demonstrations in real working environments will be made
• A technology framework enabling collaborative automation and closing innovation critical technology gaps
• An innovation coordination methodology for complex innovation “orchestration”

The Arrowhead project has started March 1st, 2013 and has a duration of four years.