Nokia has announced a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the country’s leading institute and university for research and higher education in science and engineering, to establish the Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Networked Robotics. The CoE will promote interdisciplinary research involving robotics, advanced communication technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop socially relevant use cases across areas like emergency management, agriculture and industrial automation.
Nokia Lab at IISc
The centre will promote engagement and cooperation between academia, start-ups and industry ecosystem partners in research and development of use cases. This centre supports and aligns with the Government initiatives of ‘Start-up India’. Some of the use cases that the collaboration will explore are using drones for remote management of agricultural orchards to promote water conservation and avoid human contact with pesticide, and drones using a 5G-enabled wide-area network to gather situational information, helping first responders to save lives by accessing the affected areas during disaster relief.
Nokia will share its expertise in network innovations and leverage Nokia Bell Labs’ technical expertise in robot orchestration, robot network controller and human-robot interaction to help the research and development of the end-to-end use case technology solutions. IISc will engage its cross-disciplinary faculty and researchers, and provide its in-house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems.
The collaboration will help IISc in capacity building and human resources development in cutting-edge technology of robotics, 5G and autonomous systems. The research will also contribute to standards development and inform research. The Nokia CoE at IISc will facilitate close interaction with all the stakeholders of the ecosystem for the exchange of ideas and symbiotic development of end-to-end use cases. It will also host symposia for academia and industry, and organize hackathons for startups.
