AI VLIT

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Company info:

Name: Artomatix
Date founded: 2012
Number of employees: 26
Location: Dublin Ireland

Artomatix is an award winning software company that uses Artificial Intelligence to transform 3D artistic workflows in top creative arts studios worldwide.

artomatix.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Artificial Intelligence based algorithm for image quality enhancement

Challenge

Streaming Video Content accounted for 63% of Internet Traffic as of 2017 and future traffic volumes forecast significant increase as a result of more internet users, more smart devices along with the demand for higher resolution content from HD to 4K or 8K UHD. The challenge of the project was to deliver high quality video experience to the user by increasing the compression and decreasing the resolution of the source stream. This will have the potential to massively reduce global internet traffic, improving the user experience and benefitting the World at large.

Solution

Artomatix goal was to develop a more efficient method to deliver high-resolution content to the user while minimising the network traffic and associated infrastructure costs. So the challenge was to enable data to be transmitted / broadcast at a low resolution and then upscaled and enhanced in real-time on the user’s device by applying “AI at the edge” to deliver that compelling user experience.

By exploiting the capabilities offered by new AI approaches and applying CNNs to image upscaling, Artomatix was able to develope an efficient high-quality hardware independent upscaling engine which can be licensed to and exploited by multiple platforms such as the TheoPlayer™ multi-platform players.

FED4SAE Support

FED4SAE has enabled Artomatix to further a collaboration with Intel; receive support from CEA and receive advice on the management of innovation and the got-to-market strategy from Blumorpho.

Artomatix have built a stripped-down version of its image-enhancement NN making it compatible with resource-limited hardware such as the Intel ® Movidius™ Myriad VPU in the Intel Neural Compute Stick hardware with almost unperceivable quality loss. Thanks to the collaboration with CEA, Artomatix is now operating an industry-standard-based image and video compression testbench for enhanced-images quality assessment and NN training.

Impact

Artomatix have investigated the impact of applying Artificial intelligence approaches to enable high quality video upscaling images from 720K to HD 1024K and above. They have identified and validated the best approaches and compared these results to existing upscaling approaches using SSIM etc. They have applied and validated these approaches in a number of domains from Gaming (synthetic images), cartoons to static images used in web content (furniture).

In 2020 Artomatix is now part of the Artomatix is now part of the Unity family (€60m acquisition) who have committed to growing the investment resulting in significant and headcount growth in Europe.

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AIRTech

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Company info:

Name: OTA Analytics
Date founded: 2015
Number of employees: 7
Location: Devon, UK

OTA Analytics provide real-time logging and analytics services to enable urban drainage systems to be monitored, maintained, valued and controlled.

www.overtheairanalytics.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Artificially Intelligent Rainwater Management Technology

Challenge

In our busy urban settings, frequently, there is either too much or too little water. With changes in our climate, growing urban populations and increased hard surfaces in our cities, we have seen a significant increase in the risk of flooding and sewer spills. Furthermore, ever increasing pressure on water resources and challenges of potable water availability require rapid implementation of water efficiency measures in cities on every continent. Innovative cyber physical technologies are required in order to resolve two of the World’s most costly challenges of our time.

Solution

Rainwater management systems are dual-purpose solutions; providing water efficiency benefits as well as stormwater management services with associated monetary, energy and carbon cost savings for both consumers and utilities. OTA utilised state of the art IoT technologies, which incorporate Predictive Analytics & Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the latest water management and engineering practices. Our vision was to deliver systems that are low-cost, reliable and scalable across global markets. Such systems bring multiple benefits and target a nexus of the challenges facing the water management sector. They provide an ability to capture, store, reuse and release rainwater incident on individual properties and by doing so improve the potable water supply-demand balance and reduce the likelihood of stormwater related flooding and pollution.

FED4SAE Support

In this experiment, we developed a robust, scalable hardware/software system incorporating STM32 platform with Murata’s LoraWAN module into OTA’s middleware, deployed it for testing and validation in the SmartCity Santander testbed as well as case studies in South West England, and used the subsequent data to develop and refine our innovative AI-based control algorithms, in a real-world setting. This was indeed a great success both on the hardware side where prototype systems have been running for over a year successfully, and also the system operation, with optimum operation of tank storage management.

With the business development support from Blumorpho and the Digital Catapult, this experiment has helped us accelerating our solution to market in the EU, building relationship with other suppliers and potential clients, where we can enter as a first mover and realise a significant market share.

Impact

When implemented at scale, our system can help mitigate flooding and sewer spills at some of the most challenging catchments and areas, resulting in significant saving (economic, energy and carbon) alongside climate change adaptation and mitigation. Meanwhile, each system can help reduce demand on dwindling potable water supplies. The market size for both flood mitigation as well as water use efficiency is significant, and the solution can be adapted for application across arid, and wet climates.

Achievements

Beta tested complete solution successfully on Isles of Scilly.
New deployment scheduled for Anglian Water.
Company was acquired by SDS Holdings in early 2020.

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Cadix

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Company info:

Name: Wegoto
Date founded: 2015
Number of employees: 3
Location: Montbonnot St-Martin (France)

Wegoto develops solutions to capture geographic data in the field & connect geographic information systems (GIS) to a multimodal mobility platform, for real time data update and dissemination.

http://www.wegoto.eu/

Partners:


Innovation Management Partner:

Real-Time 3D scanning system for Accessibility diagnosis
in urban environments

Challenge

Digital 3D city maps are useful for many applications, for instance, urban planning, emergency response simulation, virtual tourism and illustration of historical buildings, route planning, accessibility analysis for different types of mobility and profiles. Basically, different types of maps can be created, depending on the application requirements. The main acquisition techniques that can be found in the literature are either highly time consuming (with many manual post-treatment to build the 3D map) or they are highly computational demanding (with off-line treatment of the raw data and large memory storage) while the spatial resolution might be not sufficient for the targeted application.
Thanks to the project CADIX, Wegoto developped an integrated system that complements today Wegoto LabTrack, a trolley designed to collect data in pathways to later perform accessibility analysis and route planning for people with different profiles and (dis)abilities in the context of soft mobility.

Solution

CADIX captures at low cost 3D data from different range sensors. These data are fused in real-time, leading to a compact source of 3D information. The LabTrack-CADIX solution is a hybrid measurement system with cameras, telemeters, Time-of-Flight sensors, LiDAR together with GPS localisation of the obstacles present in the pathway. This LabTrack-CADIX solution extends the current database with “safety cocoon” information, i.e. information regarding a safe volume defined around the LabTrack.

FED4SAE Support

Wegoto business model is based on collecting and disseminating urban geographic data. FED4SAE allows Wegoto to access CEA support to revisit the architecture (hardware and software) of the LabTrack, taking into account sensor characteristics, computing and memory needs and ease the integration of an encoded wheel that triggers data acquisition every time the LabTrack travels 1m. Thanks to CEA expertise, CADIX firmware was developed using ROS (Robot Operating System) and integrating SigmaFusion™ to fuse data in 3D from the different range sensing technologies, i.e. LiDAR, stereo camera and Time-of-Flight sensors (from STM) acquired through a STM32 platform, provided to the project by STM. Tests have been conducted with the prototype in laboratory environment and in CEA “mini smart village” that mimics a (simplified) urban environment with poles, parking barrier, traffic signs, buildings, pedestrian pathway. Then, the LabTrack-CADIX system will be validated tests in real-life environments.

Impact

Wegoto is currently accelerating its development and in search for financing to sustain its business roadmap. Wegoto will continue to invest in R&D activities to improve the LabtTrack by with another range sensing technology, able to offer the same measurement precision, but with a smaller range (a few meters is enough), and at low cost, accelerate and increase its data collection speed. The CADIX project is fully part of Wegoto corporate strategy and complementary to future envisaged projects, in particular in the field of imaging.

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HSENS

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Company info:

Name: Encore Lab SL
Date founded: 2010
Number of employees: 10
Location: Logrono, Spain

Encore Lab is a technology-based company whose main objective is the development of innovative solutions in three technical areas: development of electronic devices, advanced software and data analysis via data mining.

www.encore-lab.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

New low consumption and autonomous soil humidity sensor with fast deployment

Challenge

Water is a key resource for agriculture both for the economic and environmental sustainability. The volume of water used for irrigation per year in EU-28 is 39.8 billion m3. However, effective irrigation is only 35% of this amount.

Irrigation of crops is usually applied based on a fixed schedule or even on the farmers intuition. Despite technologies such as soil moisture sensors are available in the market to help farmers make better decisions on water management, there is a poor market penetration for these technologies

Solution

ENCORE aimed to design a low cost Cyber-Physical-System that will integrate sensing, logging and remote communication functionalities. Using the latest low consumption IoT technologies such as Ultranarrow Band protocols and the new generation of low power microprocessors STM32-L0.

Achievements

ENCORE LAB have designed and prototyped device able to measure soil humidity at different depths attached to an autonomous plug and play communication module able to send real time data to agronomic platform Cesens®. The device installation does not require specialized staff or tools and it is based on DIY concept.

Impact

Agriculture is the largest single user of fresh water, accounting for ∼75% of current human water use. Globally, in both irrigated and rain fed agriculture only about 10–30% of the available water (as rainfall, surface or groundwater) is used by plants as transpiration, being even a lower figure (5%) in arid areas.

In this context, improving water use efficiency in agriculture could not only make a better use of this scarce resource but also reduce the energy consumption derived of the use of pumps and other devices involved in irrigation. Soil moisture monitoring is the more direct method to assess the real need for irrigation in agriculture.

HSENS proposes a new technology that will significantly contribute to these goals, allowing to reduce the consumption both of water and energy by more than 30% in agriculture. Thus, only in Europe the new system would allow to save almost 12 billion m3 of water per year.

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SureWash

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Company info:

Name: Surewash-Glanta
Date founded: 2010
Number of employees: 7
Location: Dublin, Ireland

SureWash uses its patented gesture recognition application to teach staff, patients on the proper hand hygiene protocol to WHO handwashing standard.

https://surewash.com/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

SureWash Hand Hygiene guidance and measurement system over the sink

Challenge

COVID-19 has raised everyone awareness of the importance of hand hygiene, however before it arrived, 9 million infections occur each year in European hospitals and care facilities (European centre for disease control https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/infographic-healthcare-associated-infections-threat-patient-safety-europe), and in the US, hospital acquired infections kills 100,000 patients each year and cost $45 Billion. In fact, seven percent (7%) of all Hospital patients in developed countries acquire infections (HAI).

The World Health Org (WHO) estimate that 50% of infections could be prevented with better hand hygiene and to reduce hand acquired infections, the WHO have developed a seven step handwashing protocol that mitigates the risk of bacteria remaining on washed hands.

Solution

Glanta T/A Surewash™ have developed an Over The Sink hand wash training and monitoring system (Surewash OTS) that provide real-time feedback to the user as they are washing their hands as to their compliance to the WHO handwashing protocol.

The goal is to increase staff compliance to the protocol, thus reduce infections and avoid the need for antibiotics to treat infections. This improves patient outcomes, shorten hospital stay and overall results in lives saved and significant cost avoidance.

There may be many over the sink units deployed across a hospital wards and as they are “smart and connected” they capture and report real-time hand hygiene data which is aggregated and enables hospital management to visualise utilisation, track compliance, compare sites and enables early invention to prevent the outbreak of infections.

FED4SAE Support

SureWash™ partnered with both Intel, CEA and IRT-Nanoelec to develop, deploy and validate a number of prototypes. Intel Movidius engineers provided assistance on the Intel’s MyriadX™ VPU(Visual Processing Units), OpenVino and Realsense™ depth sensing camera technology.

The prototypes were deployed, tested and evaluated in the IRT-Nanoelec testbed facility. Functional testing included (GDPR) privacy and cybersecurity compliance assessment as well as usability analysis and user acceptance with potential customers. As part of the FED4SAE suite of services, SureWash is receiving support in business modelling, market insights and design to cost from Blumorpho and CEA-Open Innovation team. Intel has introduced Surewash™ to a number of potential partners to accelerate its path to market.

Impact

The working prototype was deployed at Korian Nursing Homes (France) and valuable feedback was provide to Surewash team.

The devices were used in a clinical trial within the NHS (UK) and it increased the quality of hand hygiene by 197% and the number of hand wash events by 147%. The results were published in the American Journal of Infection Control in February 2020.

SureWash are now seeking a partner to commercialise this product at scale. If you are interested in helping to roll out SureWash AVA into the marketplace, please get in touch through the following link https://surewash.com/contact-us/.

For further information about the SureWash products, visit www.surewash.com.

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