In particular, the project aims to identify new opportunities to explore the results of these European projects by identifying cross-fertilisation opportunities and by taking these results to market using regional funds (for example, supporting technology transfer and demonstrations). Project EXPLORE will make it possible to test and demonstrate this strategy to promote RTD results in a group of over ten European regions.

The purpose of this event was to provide an opportunity for partners present their RTD results and meet with companies interested in exploring those results. INESC TEC presented four technologies, more specifically the robot CARLoS (presented by Germano Veiga of the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, CROB), a performance evaluation tool (presented by Filipe Ferreira of the Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering, CESE), a tool that suggests fashion products (presented by Carlos Soares, CESE), and finally a collaborative structure to manage business networks (presented by César Toscano, CESE). A total of 14 technologies were presented, as well as the website where these and other technologies can be consulted (explore.explore-fp7.eu). Luís Carneiro and Vasco Teles, who are part of the project team, also participated in this event.

The goal was to provide information on the selected R&D results and demonstrate their potential application in industrial processes, equipment and associated services, thus making it possible to identify actions to support these technologies. About 30 organisations from different countries participated in this event, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany or Belgium.

Because all partners were in Porto for the event, it was decided to organise the General Assembly meeting on the 17^th.

Besides INESC TEC, the EXPLORE consortium also includes: Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation (Spain), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Tecnologie Industriali e Automazione (Italy), Fraunhofer IPA (Germany), TNO Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (Netherlands), Fondazione Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Laboratory of Manufacturing Systems and Automation – University of Patras (Greece), CECIMO - Comité European de Cooperation des Industries de la Machine-Outil (Belgium), Centre Technique des Industries Mécaniques (France), AGORIA (Belgium), Tampere University of Technology (Finland), Lower Silesian Innovation and Science Park (Poland), Scuola Universitaria Professionale Della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland) and Wirtschaftsforderung Region Stuttgart GmbH (Germany).

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: INESC Porto and FEUP.