Information and Communication Technologies
We live in an interconnected world, where digitalisation, interoperability between platforms, data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) will allow new products and services to emerge in multiple application sectors (Industry 4.0, transport, energy, logistics, capital goods, machine tools, consumer electronics, etc.).
The digitalisation of industrial embedded systems becomes the central element of this evolution. With this in mind, we provide embedded systems with IoT (Internet of Things) and IIoT (Industrial IoT) connectivity, allowing them to be monitored, controlled and managed remotely with the aim of providing advanced services (predictive maintenance, fleet management, advanced analytics, etc.).
In IKERLAN's ICT area, we focus on research into new, reliable communication systems for industrial environments, cyber secure and resilient to external attacks, as well as smart digital platforms capable of ingesting, managing and analysing large volumes of data in a scaleable manner and in real time (alarms, KPIs, predictions, etc.).
To achieve this we have teams of expert researchers in the IoT and digital platform teams and the data analysis and artificial intelligence teams. Combining both of these disciplines we are able to offer Smart digital platforms that allow the establishment of value chains from embedded systems with cyber secure connectivity, fog /edge-to-cloud dynamic architectures with early analytic capabilities, as well as Cloud Platforms with extreme analytic and Artificial Intelligence capabilities, and the most advanced schemes of user interaction with data.
Technologies we employ
- Smart Digital Platforms highly scaleable in cloud environments; public, private and hybrid cloud architectures
- Artificial intelligence and data analysis techniques applied to Industry 4.0 sectors (energy, transport, advanced manufacturing, etc.)
- Life cycle of artificial intelligence algorithms
- Interpretability of data and artificial intelligence algorithms
- Smart Interaction with data platforms, web technologies and other forms of natural interaction (chatbots, mass data interpretation, etc.)
- Development of platforms based on micro-services and “serverless”
- Methodologies for the design and validation of digital platforms
- Short-range IoT connectivity (BLE, ZigBee, NFC, UWB, WiFi)
- Best-in-class in long-range IoT connectivity on non-licensed bands (LoRa, Sigfox), on licensed bands (2G/3G/4G, NB-IoT, LTE-M) and 5G technology
- Communication protocols for IoT/IIoT and interoperability: MQTT, CoAP, DDS, LwM2M, AMQP, Websocket, NodeRed, etc.
- Inter-vehicular communications (V2X, 802.11p)
- Outdoor location technologies (GPS, GNSS, celular) and indoor location technologies (UWB, BLE)
- Reliable end-to-end and interoperable digital platforms with direct communication and using IoT gateways or edge nodes on fog platforms: fog-to-cloud continuum and artificial intelligence at the edge
- Intelligence of things: integration of artificial intelligence / machine learning on edge nodes and embedded systems for analytics and early decision making (low latency)
- IoT development life cycle geared towards checking and validation of safe and reliable solutions on a large scale
