AIRA, the Artificial Intelligence Research Alliance in Catalonia, is founded
The UPC, at the Smart City Expo World Congress 2022
November 17, 2022
CIT UPC, at the fifth edition of the Open Innovation Forum
December 15, 202224/11/2022
The UPC Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (IDEAI) is one of the members of the AIRA alliance, which was created to promote scientific research, attract and retain talent, and accelerate the transformation of knowledge into impactful solutions based on artificial intelligence in Catalonia. The Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) are also part of the initiative.
The Artificial Intelligence Research Alliance (AIRA) was presented on 23 November at an event at the Casa de la Convalescència of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). The event was attended by members of the Catalan research ecosystem in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
AIRA’s mission is to strengthen the competitiveness of the Catalan AI research ecosystem by boosting the knowledge industry and projecting Catalonia as a major hub, a leader in southern Europe, in research in this field. Its main objectives are to bring together all the leading research capacity of the Catalan ecosystem, promote high-impact research, attract and retain talent, and promote specialisation in the field of AI.
The alliance is one of the four pillars of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy of Catalonia (Catalonia.AI), which establishes the priorities and lines of action to make Catalonia a hub of innovation, leadership and attraction of talent and companies in the field of artificial intelligence. Within this strategy, AIRA is part of the research and innovation axis: it is a structure to promote synergies and collaborations between groups, institutes, universities and research centres specialised in AI, to promote joint activity at national and international level, and to establish a shared vision of priority objectives in this field in Catalonia.
An alliance open to all groups and research centres in the country
The AIRA initiative has been established as a cooperative workspace where institutes, research centres and AI infrastructures in Catalonia can develop a coordinated strategy to foster scientific research, manage talent and accelerate the development of AI-based solutions in Catalonia.
The alliance is driven by the Government of Catalonia and initially formed by the Computer Vision Centre (CVC), coordinator of the initiative; the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (IDEAI-UPC); the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS); the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI-CSIC-UPC), and the Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (IIIA-CSIC). However, it is open to any institution that is researching artificial intelligence and achieving high levels of excellence in this field.
Related Projects
- UPC, the Port of Barcelona and Siport21 will create an innovative operational traffic management system based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. This will be developed within the Compass+ project, which has been recognised as a pre-commercial project in the second call of the innovation fund managed by Ports of the State − Ports 4.0. The aim of the fund is to enhance efficiency and safety in port operations by integrating disruptive technologies that will drive the ports of the future.
- The LENA project emerged with the aim of creating continuous learning algorithms in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) that are robust and flexible. This project is led by the Mobile Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group (RAIG) from the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI, CSIC-UPC) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC). LENA is focused on developing innovative technologies that overcome the current limitations in AI algorithms that, once trained, tend to show a certain degree of rigidity in the face of new, unexpected situations.
- The inLab FIB of the UPC is participating with the company Kapture Intelligence in a project to improve quality control systems in manufacture processes, based on a model of an artificial intelligence algorithm that detects when a part or product has suffered from a drop in quality level.
- A multidisciplinary team at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) is working on the European project AI - Enhanced Fibre -Wireless Optical 6G Network in Support for Connected Mobility (6G-EWOC) to develop technologies and a 6G optical network that will combine artificial intelligence with 6G technologies, remote sensing systems and optical communication (wireless and by optical fibre). The result will be a network that will enable autonomous and human-driven vehicles to circulate safely, avoiding accidents in zones that have a lot of traffic or are very busy.
