2Ai - Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave

About

The scientific vision for this research work will focus on augmenting the knowledge, information and interaction at the disposal of agents, robots and humans to improve their performance in the 2Ai areas. To this end, we aim to apply machine learning techniques, spanning natural language processing, deep learning and computer vision, to extract information and provide knowledge to potentiate intelligent decision automation systems and human-AI collaboration. 2Ai will also strongly focus on the application of gamification concepts as an engine for the development of new smart and personalized training approaches. Furthermore, the search for more natural interfaces to improve the overall control of the context environment will complete an integrated suite of research efforts, on the path toward innovative technologies and smarter services.

The creation of these types of solutions can generate new markets, and improve the efficiency of existing goods and services across the 2Ai impact areas:

Healthcare: The development of novel AI services aiming to provide innovative decision support systems for improved medical diagnoses. It also has the potential to improve telemedicine, assist in repetitive medical tasks and enhance smart surgical rooms with robots, natural user interfaces, and augmented reality setups by combining different image sources. Additionally, smart data analysis strategies will be pursued as a key factor in order to correlate illness evolution to their treatment better. In the long term, the goal is to provide more efficient pipelines to promote proactive and personalized clinical services.

Industry: AI services to increase production capabilities through a more reliable forecast of market demand, increased flexibility in operations and the supply chain and equipment failure prediction will drive this research area. By applying these solutions, smarter, faster, cheaper production approaches are expected. Furthermore, the application of game-based learning tools, with virtual and augmented reality, collaborative robots and smart virtual assistants are expected to improve productivity and the employee's health and safety.

Environment and security: AI services, combining aerial robots and artificial vision, to perform smart monitoring of natural environments (e.g., forests) will be pursued. These AI services can gather site-specific and timely data about different dynamic aspects of the environment, generate warnings only when and where they are needed, and create a historical record of the environment. AI can also assist in the supervision and detection of anomalous conditions, providing situational awareness for a broad range of monitoring services. Distributed sensor systems complemented with AI can further increase pattern understanding of normal conditions, and detect when the probability of change rises significantly, whether triggered by natural or human causes.