UPC innovative solutions, at the MWC 2023

The technology and innovation that the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) has presented at MWC Barcelona 2023 is the result of the work of research teams in various areas of application. The solutions that are displayed range from an application to predict the number of passengers travelling on public transport by road, a system for the anonymisation of data with applications in the mobility sector and an application to predict the mode of transport used by citizens, through deep learning techniques. In addition, a solution to optimise the charge level of electric batteries that uses latest generation technologies has been presented, and a new pan-European learning ecosystem focused on improving the training of digital specialists in emerging areas such as AI, IoT and cybersecurity. 

These projects have been described, through the UPC Technology Center (CIT UPC), in the university space of the Catalan Government’s Catalonia pavilion in Congress Square, booth 4, of the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona (Av. Joan Carles I, 64, l’Hospitalet de Llobregat). Some of these initiatives were presented in the UPC’s second edition of El Radar call for applications, promoted to identify research groups’ technology projects in the areas of mobile and related technologies.

Virtual reality for the rehabilitation of neuromuscular injuries

The Multimedia Applications and ICTs Laboratory (LAM) of the UPC has presented Muvity, a gamified virtual reality application for the rehabilitation of patients with chronic injuries. The system is designed for patients to do rehabilitation exercises through games designed by the treatment team.

The functioning of the system is based on capturing movement through a low-cost depth camera. The biomechanical data that are gathered by the system in real time (angles of movement, time played and performance) are stored in a remote database so that the physiotherapist can then analyse and adapt the treatment. In this way, the therapist can remotely plan and personalise the exercises and games and their length and difficulty, so that the patient can complete them at home, as if they were daily mission.

AI applied to autonomous vehicles to improve fog vision

The Centre for Sensors, Instruments and Systems Development (CD6) of the UPC and the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (IDEAI), through the Image and Video Processing Group (GPI), have developed a solution applied to the autonomous car to detect obstacles in foggy conditions and so improve the safety of driving.

As part of the project, a software solution has been developed that is based on deep learning technologies. It enables the integration of real-time image processing from image sensors, radar data and LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging). In this way, aspects of perception and fusion of the image sensors, radar and high-density point clouds are improved. This optimises the perception of vehicles in hostile environments, such as fog or smoke and even sand and smog.

IoT technology to monitor the state of the sea and improve the safety of beaches

The Technological Development Centre for Remote Acquisition and Data Processing Systems (SARTI) of the UPC, along with the company Ona Safe & Clean, is leading the Douglas project. This is a technology based on the internet of things (IoT) to monitor the state of the sea and improve safety in the bathing area of beaches in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.

The solution is based on a signalling system with marker buoys that delimit the separate areas for  bathing and vessels. Through IoT devices inside the buoys, information is sent in real time on the state of the sea and other environmental parameters. Automatically, the system assigns the right flag that allows bathing on the beach or not, regardless of whether it has a lifeguard service. In this solution, IoT technologies are used for the processing, transmission and management of information.

A series of 50 devices have been designed and produced and a website has been created to monitor and configure an app for the installation of the buoys, which could be set up on any beach in Catalonia.

Advanced wireless communication services

The LoRaMesher project, in which the Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (CNDS) research group of the UPC participates, consists of an advanced wireless communication service to interconnect IoT applications (that covers a greater distance and has a much lower energy consumption than WiFi).

This is the first open code library to implement a data routing protocol that enables the interconnection of IoT applications on LoRa wireless technology. The IoT devices connected through LoRa construct a mesh network, so that they can communicate between each other through nodes of the network, as occurs on the internet. The two-way communication of the devices can expand the functionality of the IoT layer so that it does not just emit the data gathered by its sensors, which facilitates the implementation of communication between devices with a flexible, scalable routing protocol that is also easy to integrate into IoT applications.