KONCAR INSTITUT ZA ELEKTROTEHNIKU D.O.O.

Their core work

Koncar Electrical Engineering Institute is the R&D arm of Koncar Group, one of Croatia's largest industrial conglomerates, specializing in applied electrical engineering research. Their H2020 participation shows two distinct competencies: industrial automation and human-robot interaction safety (SafeLog), and open innovation methodologies bridging university research with industry practice (OpenInnoTrain). In SafeLog, they contributed technical expertise to designing safe human-robot collaboration systems for logistics environments. Their work sits at the intersection of electrical engineering, industrial automation, and technology transfer — making them a bridge between heavy industry and applied research.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 project (SafeLog, 2016) was firmly grounded in technical engineering — safe robotics and automation in industrial logistics, where they contributed as a domain specialist. By 2019, they joined OpenInnoTrain, an MSCA-RISE mobility and training network, signaling a deliberate move toward open innovation methodology and cross-sector knowledge translation. This shift suggests the institute is building a secondary capability in technology transfer and industry-academia collaboration, likely to complement and commercialize their core engineering R&D.

They appear to be expanding beyond pure technical R&D toward a dual role — engineering specialist and open innovation facilitator — which could make them attractive as an industry-facing partner in future consortia bridging applied research with business uptake.

How they like to work

Koncar Electrical Engineering Institute has participated exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, across both H2020 projects. Despite only two projects, they engaged with 26 unique partners across 13 countries, suggesting they join large, multinational consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. This profile is consistent with a specialist contributor that brings industrial credibility and electrical engineering know-how to broader research networks.

The institute has built a surprisingly broad network for its modest project count — 26 partners across 13 countries, indicating involvement in large pan-European consortia. No geographic clustering is visible from the data, suggesting openness to diverse European partnerships.

What sets them apart

As the research institute of Koncar Group — a major Croatian industrial manufacturer active in energy, transport, and automation — this organization brings something most academic partners cannot: direct links to real industrial production and deployment environments. For consortium builders, this means access to both R&D capability and a credible industrial end-user within the same entity. Their dual exposure to robotics engineering and open innovation frameworks also makes them useful in projects that need to demonstrate industry relevance and technology transfer pathways.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SafeLog
  Their largest project by far (EUR 501,150), addressing the technically complex problem of safe human-robot coexistence in dynamic warehouse environments — a core Industry 4.0 challenge with strong commercial relevance.
• OpenInnoTrain
  An MSCA-RISE training network spanning Industry 4.0, cleantech, fintech, and food tech sectors, notable for showing the institute's willingness to engage in cross-sector knowledge exchange well outside traditional electrical engineering.