New-Tech Europe Magazine | June 2016

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TactoTek awarded EUR 2.5 Million EU Horizon 2020 grant to mass produce injection molded electronics

TactoTek Solution and Capabilities Recognized As Key Enabling Technology That Enables and Drives Innovation and EU Competitiveness TactoTek, a leading manufacturer of 3D injection molded structural electronics (IMSE) solutions today announced that it has been named a recipient of a €2.5 million EU Horizon 2020 award to mass produce injection molded electronics (IME) solutions. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument of Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global competitiveness and whose charter includes supporting new, breakthrough enabling and industrial technologies that strengthen Europe’s industrial capabilities. “TactoTek is honored to be selected by the H2020 investment

committee,” said Jussi Harvela, CEO of TactoTek, TactoTek’s solutions integrate printed circuitry, printed touch controls and discrete electronic components, such as LEDs and ICs, into light, 3D injection molded plastics as thin as 2mm. By incorporating circuitry and electronics directly into plastic structures, TactoTek enables brands to design innovative form factors and consolidate electronics into a single 3D structure. TactoTek maintains a staff of engineers to help customers adapt their traditional electronics designs into IMSE solutions. The company prototypes and manufactures products in its Kempele, Finland, factory that includes a complete, vertically- integrated production capability; mass production can be performed by TactoTek or TactoTek-licensed production partners.

Hallmark Envisions Real-Time Space Command and Control First effort under new program aims to develop technologies to help commanders rapidly plan, assess, and execute the full spectrum of U.S. military operations in space

lonely orbits with volleys of satellite constellations. Despite this much more complex and chaotic environment, commanders with responsibility for space domain awareness often rely on outdated tools and processes - and thus incomplete information - as they plan, assess, and execute U.S. military operations in space. To help address these technical and strategicchallenges,DARPA is launching the first of two planned efforts under the Agency’s new Hallmark program, which has the overarching goal to

Military commanders responsible for situational awareness and command and control of assets in space know all too well the challenge that comes from the vast size of the space domain. The volume of Earth’s operational space domain is hundreds of thousands times larger than the Earth’s oceans. It

contains thousands of objects hurtling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. The scales and speeds in this extreme environment are difficult enough to grasp conceptually, let alone operationally, as is required for commanders overseeing the nation’s increasingly critical space assets. Current space domain awareness tools and technologies were developed when there were many fewer objects in space. Only a few nations could even place satellites in orbit, and those orbits were easily predictable without advanced software tools. That situation has changed dramatically in the past decade with a developing space industry flooding once

provide breakthrough capabilities in U.S. space command and control. This first effort, the Hallmark Software Testbed (Hallmark-ST), has as its primary goal the creation of an advanced enterprise software architecture for a testbed for tools that will integrate a full spectrum of real-time space- domain systems and capabilities. The testbed would be used to expedite the creation and assessment of a comprehensive set of new and improved tools and technologies that could be spun off into near-term operational use for the Defense Department’s Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) and Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center

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