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INNOVATION
Enhanced Additive manufacturing for Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), with more design freedom
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Market Maturity: Business Ready
These are innovations that are putting concrete market-oriented ideas together and are, for example, pursuing market studies, business plans, engagements with relevant partner and end-users. Learn more
Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as addressing the needs of existing markets and existing customers. Learn more
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Prepare for Market entry
  • Secure capital
  • Scale-up market opportunities
Location of Key Innovators developing this innovation
Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 9
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

The UN explains: "Investments in infrastructure – transport, irrigation, energy and information and communication technology – are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. It has long been recognized that growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes require investment in infrastructure."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 11
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

The UN explains: "The challenges cities face can be overcome in ways that allow them to continue to thrive and grow, while improving resource use and reducing pollution and poverty. The future we want includes cities of opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 12
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

The UN explains: "Sustainable consumption and production is about promoting resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, green and decent jobs and a better quality of life for all. Its implementation helps to achieve overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social costs, strengthen economic competitiveness and reduce poverty.

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon Europe project SHINTO with an end date of 30/09/2025
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project SHINTO
The SHINTO project aims to disrupt the soft robotics market by creating a new market for self-healing structural components, introducing autonomous damage detection and healing in intelligent soft robots. The current field is driven by a high adoption of soft grippers that ensure safe operation for collaborative robots in manufacturing and delicate manipulation in agrifood and warehousing. However, these expensive and mostly non-recyclable soft robots have limited lifetimes due to their vulnerability to damage. In symbiosis, VUB-research groups FYSC and Brubotics have been building soft robots out of self-healing materials that fully recover functional material properties and resulting performances after healing incurred damage. This extends the robots service lifetime and raises their reliability and sustainability, which in combination with their inherent recyclability contributes to economic benefits and the EU Green Deal. In SHINTO, technological breakthroughs will mature beyond lab demonstrators over pilot scale towards commercial viability through synergistic advances in (patented) self-healing polymers, manufacturing, application validation and business development. The team combines profound knowledge of materials and robotics scientists with business experts to establish a new deep tech company, marketing next generation self-healing grippers as semi-finished goods. The beach-head strategy targets existing soft robotics markets based on confirmed product-market fits. Existing feedback loops with key industrial partners, field tests and life cycle assessment allow to cocreate the required quality and TRL for business transition, while limiting business risk to a niche market. Parallel, continuous market analysis enables updating/expanding requirements and extending to broader (non-)robotic markets. The soft robotics market is expected to grow at 40%/y to $6.3B by 2027, while market fits beyond this niche are identified, e.g. the tire market at $174B in 2028.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 15/12/2023.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 117122