The Connected Motion Collaboration Framework
Challenging The Status Quo
Research frameworks in the MENA region have largely followed traditional funding models, often resulting in limited collaboration and commercial impact. Researchers’ challenges can be summed up in the following areas:
Scattered Research Efforts
Researchers often work in silos, focusing on individual topics without coordination, leading to fragmented research efforts..
Inadequate Financial Reward
There is a lack of proper financial incentives or rewards for academic researchers, which diminishes motivation.
In this context, Connected Motion recognizes the need for a different approach that prioritizes solving real-world mobility challenges, fosters strong partnerships between academia and industry, and promotes the commercialization of research. By this, Connected Motion aims to be a central focal point (or excellence center) for research activities relative to mobility in the MENA region.
The proposed collaboration framework aims to bridge the gap between academic research and industry needs by offering researchers and students opportunities to collaborate with Connected Motion on cutting-edge mobility solutions. The offered opportunities will be directly with Connected Motion. This initiative will provide academic collaborators with technical support, hardware, financial incentives, and commercialization pathways while also creating potential career opportunities for students.
Framework Overview
The figure below captures the high level overview of the collaboration framework. Please read further for details
The Submission Process
Applicants start by looking at the general CM research areas and check if any are of interest or relevant to their background. If the applicant finds that they can contribute to a project and can offer their expertise, they are encouraged to apply through the application portal to access more detail.
If the application is approved by CM the applicant is contacted for an NDA signing. Once the NDA is signed CM will share with the applicant project details. If the applicant desires to proceed, an agreement would be signed between the applicant and CM to start project execution.
There are minimal restrictions on age, occupation, and even location. CM is rather interested in applicants with a strong track record and/or a lot of energy to bring to the table. Groups (up to three) of applicants are also allowed to apply. For more detail on the rules please check the rules page.
Forms of Support
Forms of support would all be defined in a project agreement before starting the execution of a project. Support could come in any of these different forms:
- Training courses: Connected Motion could provide access to internal or external training (cloud or online).
- Components: Connected Motion would make available any hardware components associated with a particular idea/project.
- Hardware resources: Connected Motion would provide access to hardware resources such as GPUs for training AI models.
- Technical Expertise: Connected Motion would provide its industrial insight and expertise throughout the collaboration process.
- Licensing & Royalties: Connected Motion would work with collaborators toward licensing any outcome that can be used in a product.
- Publication & Contribution Incentives: Connected Motion would provide an incentive structure for both publications and open source contributions to reward collaborators.
- Commercialization: Connected Motion is in a key position to identify market opportunities and provide a commercialization path for all ideas that are shared.
Collaboration Outcomes
As part of this framework, there are three outcomes that Connected Motion would be interested in:
- High Quality Publications: Collaborators are encouraged to publish work that provides significant scientific impact and would establish a scientific presence for Connected Motion.
- Open Source Contributions: Connected Motion believes in the power of community. As such, collaborators are encouraged to open source any tools or frameworks that emerge during the time frame of a project.
- Intellectual Property: All shared ideas are based on real life problems that have a path to commercialization. Collaborators are encouraged to come up with solutions that can be licensed with a realistic path toward commercialization. This would allow Connected Motion to accelerate innovation and share profits with collaborators for commercialized products.
Incentive Structure
Publication Incentives
Publication incentives will be issued for Q1 and Q2 Scopus indexed journals as follows:
- Q1 Scopus Indexed Journals will be issued 1500 JOD (~2100 USD) per publication.
- Q2 Scopus Indexed Journals will be issued 1000 JOD (~1400 USD) per publication.
Royalties
At the end of each project yearly cycle, any outcome that is intended to be used in a product would be licensed as part of the project the agreement. Collaborator royalties would be determined at the project agreement time where it would reach up to 25% of the sales per sold unit.
Open Source Contribution Incentives
These incentives are meant for collaborators to establish and keep maintaining open-source projects to grow over time. Incentives are broken down into three categories:
- Establishing a Project
Collaborators that establish and become maintainers of a Connected Motion open source project will receive a 700 JODs (~1000 USD) reward.
- Long-term Maintenance
Collaborators or existing maintainers can apply to update existing repositories to address issues or introduces new features. Updates can receive up to a 700 JOD (~1000 USD) reward depending on the size and nature of the update.
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