On Tuesday, 4th August Nokia said that it will set up a Robotics lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru to research socially relevant use cases based on 5G and emerging technologies. It further stated that it will collaborate with the institute to establish the Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for networked robotics.
The facility will explore the use of robotics, advanced communications, and artificial intelligence (AI) in areas such as emergency management, agriculture, and industrial automation. It will promote engagement and cooperation between academia, start-ups, and industry eco-system partner in research and development of use cases.
These include the use of drones to promote water conservation on farms, access affected areas during disaster relief, and to anticipate crop fires. 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. Drones for applications such as anticipating crop fires.
Nokia said that it will share its expertise in network innovations and leverage Nokia Bell Labs’ technical expertise in robot orchestration, robot network controllers, and human-robot interaction to support the development of new use cases. IISc, on the other hand, will engage its cross-disciplinary faculty and researchers, and provide in-house expertise in algorithms, drones, and robotic systems.
All the stakeholders of the ecosystem will be having a close interaction with Nokia CoE at IISc to exchange ideas. It will also host symposia for academia and industry and organize hackathons for start-ups. The research will also contribute to standards of development and inform research.
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.”
Sanjay Malik, Nokia’s senior vice-president and head of the India market, noted that technologies such as 5G have the potential to enable a new array of use cases with 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 ground-breaking use cases,” he said.
