- The centre will also promote engagement and cooperation between academia, start-ups and industry ecosystem partners in research and development of use cases
- IISc will engage its cross-disciplinary faculty and researchers and equip its in-house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems
Nokia has announced a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), to establish the Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Networked Robotics. It said that this CoE will promote interdisciplinary research involving robotics, advanced communication technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop socially relevant use cases across areas. These areas include emergency management, agriculture and industrial automation.
It added that the centre will also promote engagement and cooperation between academia, start-ups and industry ecosystem partners in research and development of use cases. The Nokia CoE will be available to the IISc community and its ecosystem partners for advanced research projects involving designing next-generation networks and applications of Artificial Intelligence for solving social problems said the company.
Equip its in-house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems
It added that Nokia will share its expertise in next-generation network innovations and leverage Nokia Bell Labs’ technical expertise in robot orchestration, robot network controller and human-robot interaction. IISc will engage its cross-disciplinary faculty and researchers and equip its in-house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems.
Professor G Rangarajan, director, IISc, said, “The ultimate relevance of technology is to find solutions to improve the quality of our lives. Collaboration with a global technology leader, Nokia, will go a long way in helping our students to gain knowledge and insights and make significant contributions to the development of innovative and societally relevant 5G use cases. This is a critical initiative and it will help us move closer to finding technology-powered solutions to enrich our lives.”
Anticipating crop fires
They said that some use cases which the collaboration will explore will include using drones for remote management of agricultural orchards to promote water conservation and avoid human contact with pesticide. It will also include drones using a 5G-enabled wide-area network to gather situational information, helping first responders to save lives by quickly accessing the affected areas during disaster relief and also drones for applications such as anticipating crop fires. The partnership will also host symposia for academia and industry, and organise hackathons for startups.
Sanjay Malik, senior vice president and head of India market, Nokia, said, “Emerging technologies such as the 5G have potential to enable an entirely new array of use cases with a profound societal impact. With Nokia’s rich innovation heritage, we aim to engage with the bright and young minds at IISc to nurture and advance the latest technologies that can benefit communities. We are confident that it will lead to the development of groundbreaking use cases.”
