OREANDA-NEWS. Airbus and Aerospace Valley, the largest Research & Development cluster in France, have selected four projects proposed by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which will be supported in the short term. This follows a call for ideas launched in 2014 across Europe to reduce aircraft noise, CO2emissions or fuel consumption in civil aviation, to contribute to the eco-performance and efficiency of the cabin as well as in the development of alternative energies.

The projects are:
•         ISAE/INSA – Innovative de-icing system
•         ONERA – Influence of jet fuel composition
•         INNOV’ATM, ant- insects behaviour approach for airport ground movement optimization
•         VESO Concept – Bio materials for cabin interiors

The projects will benefit in the search for funding and technological partnerships, and from collaboration with Airbus experts to help them develop their ideas in the short term.

In addition the INNOV’ATM project has been selected to be accelerated within the Airbus BizLAb, a global network of accelerator facilities created by Airbus to speed up the transformation of ground-breaking ideas into valuable business propositions.

Agnès Paillard, Aerospace Valley President said:
“We are very proud to have launched this first joint call for ideas together with Airbus. This initiative is a great opportunity for European SMEs and laboratories willing to start collaborations with Airbus and Aerospace Valley community. We are convinced that the selected ideas bring interesting concepts to environmental challenges of civil aviation. Aerospace Valley will therefore support these contributors by helping them to mature their concept and to transform these ideas into concrete projects or products.”
 
Yann Barbaux, Airbus’ Chief Innovation officer said:
Airbus is a major partner of Aerospace Valley and has welcome the proposal to jointly launch a call for ideas specifically targeting SMEs in the domain of environment, which is a top priority in our innovation roadmap. This contest is one of the initiatives we began to open Airbus to external ideas coming from our eco-system and in particular from small companies. The call for ideas was a real success with regard to both the number of applications and the quality of the proposals. We’ll make sure that the winning projects will be closely followed-up by our teams.”
 
From the 59 submitted ideas, seven teams were invited to pitch their projects to a jury, composed of Airbus, Aerospace Valley representatives and aviation experts, to assess the measurable positive impact of their proposal on the environment, the ease of implementation and the level of innovation consistent with Airbus environmental priorities
 
Airbus continually works to mitigate its environmental impact through its innovative technologies and cross-industry partnerships. The goal of the collaboration with the start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from different industries is to apply technologies that can bring incremental innovation to the products and services.
 
Aerospace Valley aims to grow the competitiveness of the Midi-Pyrénées & Aquitaine (France) regions’ Aeronautics, Space, and Embedded Systems sectors on the national, European and international levels. Aerospace Valley was certified a “Worldwide Cluster” from its inception.

The guiding purpose of Aerospace Valley is to leverage the competitiveness and visibility of its some 757 members, both on the national and international scene, as well as to optimize the attractiveness of the Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées regions in France, by fostering the development of networks and collaborative initiatives. Aerospace Valley fulfils this mission by leveraging the two regions’ assets in terms of research, innovation, and know-how, by supporting the growth of SMEs and by fostering cooperation between SMEs, industry leaders, investors, and research organizations.