It is more than ever time to invest in ICT
Valérie Blavette
Orange
blavette(at)celticnext.eu
I hope all readers of CELTIC News are well. My feeling is that going through a pandemic changes us and makes us think differently. It makes us understand what is crucial and what is only nice to have. We also learn that we can adapt, do things differently and fast. Not only AI will pave the way for a smarter world, even if for sure AI will play an important role there.
Despite all difficulties, most of us have still been able to telework and communicate thanks to digital tools, telecom networks and the cloud.
AI, telecom and IT tools have proved to be critical assets
First of all we can be proud of our telecom and IT assets. As an example, the dimensioning of networks allowed the unusual traffic peaks during the first weeks of the crisis. Working for the research of a big telecom operator, Orange, I am proud of my colleagues in the operational units and of all the working forces which allowed the continuity of services of the critical infrastructures.
Most importantly, the telecom infrastructures connected the hospitals and the businesses during that strained period. What would have been our daily life during the social distancing measures and home office without the telecom infrastructure? Without the digital applications? Without news from the remote family, talking to friends, allowing grandparents to see the younger ones, exchanging and getting information, making online food shopping? As a mother, I also appreciated that my children could do their lessons online, even if it is not always easy for a ten-year-old boy to organize his daily screen time around math, English and geography instead of using it for Fortnite, FIFA or “The Legend of Zelda”.
When I helped our au pair to get her first online medical teleconsultation from home, I thought of the CELTIC eHealth projects HIPERMED and E3, which created novel solutions for teleconsultation and telesurgery.
Some results from other CELTIC projects have also been very valuable, like VIRTUOSE, which created solutions for multi-party video communication and video analysis, area management and security. Or the UNICRINF project, which developed novel solutions for improving emergency communication.
Continuous support by the CELTIC Office
At the time I wrote this article, the CELTIC office was busy as always supporting proposers and CELTIC projects at any stage. For running projects online reviews have been organized. A first joint call between the CELTIC and the EUROGIA communities has been organized during the first trimester of this year. On 31st of March the CELTIC office has held a successful AI proposer’s webinar with a large audience – around 200 registered participants from 24 countries, many of them joining from home.
EUREKA Clusters AI call
At a time when the COVID-19 crisis has created more solidarity, more connections, even if we needed to be physically distant, the Clusters CELTIC-NEXT, EUROGIA, ITEA, PENTA and EURIPIDES2 have been cooperating more than ever to define the first EUREKA Clusters AI call.
When defining this first common call, the EUREKA Clusters have learnt a lot on how to streamline processes and make it easier for both applicants and Public Authorities. In particular a single online project submission tool for all participating Clusters has been defined and set up. We proved collectively agile, and I would like to thank the inter-Cluster colleagues for their cooperation in this new adventure.
Conclusion
Going back to the Coronavirus crisis, I hope we will be collectively able to heed all the lessons learned. No doubt our ICT infrastructures, digital tools and the use of AI at different levels have saved many lives since the beginning of the year. Some Asian countries especially reacted very fast, showing us images of what we so far thought was sci-fi. Thanks to Big Data, IA, and global collaboration, the research helped a lot to react as fast as possible to limit the damages caused by the pandemic.
That is why, even if the European and worldwide economy will need some time to recover, I am convinced it is more than ever time to invest in ICT. Research should be as fast as possible, to fight such a pandemic or to invent a smarter, safer world. That is what CELTIC and EUREKA should be after in the coming months.
Photo: © Adobe Stock
EMBRACE develops, investigates, and demonstrates the required photonic technology for a complete optical system exploiting the entire spectrum of the single mode fibre (SMF) for applications from metro to long-haul reach. This solution is supported by the large availability of SMFs with almost negligible water peak and thus extended low-loss spectral window. Right now, EMBRACE project is working on solutions to exploit the whole 1260-1625 nm spectrum. Within the project, the designed and prototyped multi-band (MB) components (coherent transceivers, optical amplifiers, wavelength selective switches, lasers) will be integrated into a permanent project demonstrator and tested over real installed fibres owned by the operators participating to the consortium.
SAFE-HOME is a multi-disciplinary project, which exploits the intersection of a number of disruptive technologies, namely sensor design, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, and recent advances in wireless networking, with emphasis on the interoperability of fog-cloud. The project aims at designing a system for monitoring the activity and movement of elders within a confined space (Home), in order to understand their activity level, with ability to identify emergency situations for alerting specific personnel, based on emergency type (e.g. medical staff, ambulance, or emergency contact). SAFE-HOME will also consider users surrounding information (e.g. neighbourhood and city information) in order to enrich solution results.
The project develops a service framework where increased possibilities for improved wellness and care at home, directed by data driven methods, integrating needs from different stages of life, different caregivers and different diagnosis. A combined strategy of service framework development, business modelling and use case solutions are undertaken and this multi-track approach aims at developing a service framework that enables the creation of flexible user solutions and a business milieu where new digital business models can flourish. Care integration would incorporate a number of different providers, to deliver to the end user in an integrated way.
The most recent CELTIC flagship project is AI-NET, launched in mid-2021 with a €66M total budget. Public authorities of Germany, Sweden and Finland, as well as major players from industry (both large and SME), and academia, are part of this ambitious European initiative.
The primary objective of the ANIARA project is to provide enablers and solutions for high-performance services deployed and operated at the network edge. To manage complexity, of artificial intelligence is used, to complement traditional optimisation algorithms. Deep edge network nodes will be deployed at locations not prepared for the power requirements of edge-centric compute.
The primary focus of the AI-NET-PROTECT sub-project is to provide automated resilience and secure networks operated on trusted equipment to critical infrastructures and enterprises. AI-NET-PROTECT will ensure the protection of critical data, network performance (like latency, throughput, availability), and infrastructure (against tampering and attacks).
AINET project objective is to provide enablers and solutions for high-performance services deployed and operated at the network edge. They contribute to cyber-resilient intelligent network automation from the edge to the core through the FOG, and from the services to the physical resources, for end users, machine-to-machine and IoT networks. AINET-ANTILLAS concentrates on applying these technologies to automotive / teleoperated driving, manufacturing industry, public safety, and public utility businesses. The goal is to provide enablers and solutions for high-performance services deployed and operated at the network edge or in the cloud.
The aim of the current project is to develop a highly efficient integrated antenna module and RF front-end solution with adaptive waveform generation in spatial, temporal, and frequency domains for beyond 5G (B5G) wireless communication infrastructure at 100GHz band and support other application sectors such as security & sensing, imaging, industrial IOT, automation etc. The proposed solution will be able to adapt dynamically to different user scenarios such as ultra-high data-rate multi-user broadband communication, reliable high mobility connectivity, ultra-low latency machine communications etc.
The project Ultra Scalable Wireless Access (USWA) focuses on technology research how to utilize the new DECT-2020 NR radio technology developed in ETSI in various use cases. DECT-2020 NR provides modern radio interface design with state-of-the-art radio capabilities for industrial use cases. DECT-2020 NR technology supports natively mesh radio network architecture which is enabling large scale local networking by relaying data between different devices and also enabling direct communication between devices. DECT-2020 NR technology can operate in a specific license exempt band used by legacy DECT.
Current AI-based industrial applications have a linear sequential approach for data collection, processing and model deployment cycles where each part of the cycle has a clear task. However, collecting the data required for learning the desired models in one place may not always be possible and centralized data collection may cause data quality issues. This project aims to provide great benefit to the manufacturing and transportation industries by efficiently incorporating artificial intelligence into the production or operation line to resolve and eliminate some invisible and internalized problems that cost a lot.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations utilize computational resources to simulate free flows of fluids (air, water, etc.), and the interaction of fluids with surfaces. CFD simulations are used in development of new mechanical parts in the automotive, aerospace and military industries to increase efficiency. CFD based experiments are cost effective in comparison to conventional methods and can estimate properties which cannot be empirically measured. For the last decade, Engineering Software Steyr GmbH (ESS) has been developing new CFD capabilities (particle-based methods) in the form of four new solvers (CFD simulation programs) and hybridizing them to increase usability.
The objective of AIcom4Health project is to offer an innovative solution towards recovering the pandemics negative impacts on public health ,healthcare access and socioeconomics through remote monitoring -AI based platform’s integration to the public’s daily life whereas employing healthier citizens for smart cities s in the area of 5G and beyond, network slicing, edge computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning based on feasible use cases including both medical and non-medical sensors for making accurate decisions and predicting risks against contagion in the future. The use cases include integration of an IoT platform with various types of sensors to monitor physiological, behavioral and environmental data from natural indoors and outdoors environments.
6G for Connected Sky project aims at solutions to enable reliable and robust connectivity for aerial and ground users via flexible and adaptive network architecture adopting multiple technologies such as satellite and direct air to ground communication (DA2GC). In addition, this project focuses on novel wireless network design and management schemes in 3-dimensional (3D) space including different types of flying vehicles with their unique requirements. Another focus is to provide robust, low latency and/or high-capacity communications to ground users in the rural areas without any infrastructure via non terrestrial networks (NTNs), which are already initially introduced in 5G.
The objective of this project is to create a novel NOC proactive management solution that will enable the evolution from the current reactive mode of operation towards a proactive and preventive mode. The vision is to predict problems that are going to occur before they impact customer service, providing an integrated view of the issue being solved, performing Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to understand and identify what causes triggered the problem and the corresponding recommended resolution.
CISSAN proposes and implements algorithms for mitigating IoT security threats through collective decision-making and with a reduced impact on the limited resources of IoT devices. These algorithms are based on research and innovation in optimizing the distribution of security capabilities and aggregating the intelligence in IoT network nodes. Three industrial use cases, on the use of IoT, inform the project developments and are used for validating and demonstrating the project results: (i) public transportation; (ii) smart energy grids; (iii) mining and tunnelling operations.
