Vicomtech-IK4

Last 7th March a new edition of the cross-border AGRIPIR project’s workshop was held in Toulouse, and Vicomtech-IK4 is part of this project. These theme-workshops are organised 4 times a year in order to promote the development of specific innovation collaborative projects. They are opened to actors from the Pyrenean farming sector, innovation companies, technological and investigation centres, and economic development organizations. The aim is to create an exchange and experimentation Network that will help the revaluation of mountain agriculture in the Pyrenees. More information on: www.agripir.com

In Bilbao from 12 to 19 March ForoTech 2013 will be hosting company lectures, debate forums, a technology exhibition, entrepreneur breakfasts, workshops, visits to laboratories and activities for schools. Companies like Microsoft, Arteche, Ingeteam, Exact, Sisteplant and Idom are participating in and sponsoring the initiative.

A consortium of Basque companies from the new technologies sector, entities and technology centres are working on the Kronos project to develop new prevention and self-care services for chronic patients, who now make up a third of the population.

The Kronos project has a holistic approach and works in two areas: to adapt care routes and healthcare provision processes to chronically ill patients, and to develop a series of support mechanisms and an integrated intelligent services platform providing back-up for the prevention and ubiquitous active care of patients suffering Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Diabetes Mellitus and Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

IK4 presents its Biotechnology capabilities at the BEC within the framework of Biospain, one of the sector’s leading European events.
Further information:
New

At IBC 2012 Synthema presents SAVAS, a collaborative project, where 3 R&D companies are developing a brand new Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology for Multilingual Live Subtitling, specifically tuned to the needs of the Broadcasting and New Media Industries. To see first-hand demonstrations of Language Independent Transcription and Respeaking please join the SAVAS team on stand 161 in Hall 14 at IBC 2012.

Vicomtech-IK4 Research Centre, I3M Molecular Image Instrumentation Institute and Bilbomática are working on a support tool for Breast Functional Units during diagnosis, treatment and evolution of Breast cancer patients. This project is formed by highly qualified national and international researchers, as well as an advisory consultant committee, where Chemistry and Physics Nobel Prize Winners, Kurt Wüthrich and Jerome Friedman, respectively, stand out. This project has been financed by CDTI (Centre for the Technological and Industrial Development) as the only industrial research project within the biomedicine area of the R&D&i INNPRONTA programme.

Vicomtech-IK4 is active in the field of application of Virtual Reality technology to the medical applications sector. As a part of the HYPER project initiatives, we are organizing two international events:

Dr. Alessandro De Mauro will chair the special session on "Games and Creativity for Neurorehabilitation" inside the event "ICNR 2012 - International Conference on Neurorehabilitation Converging Clinical and Engineering Research" (November 14-16, 2012.
Vicomtech-IK4 is organizing a hand-on session on "Virtual Reality Technology for Rehabilitation" at the Summer School on Neurorehabilitation which will be held in Zaragoza, Spain, Sept 16 - 21, 2012.

Another reference webpage:
http://www.icnr2012.org/

Mª Teresa Linaza, Director of eTourism and Cultural Heritage, was invited to participate in Panel III: New Technologies and their Applications to Tourism within the 2nd International ICT, Tourism and Innovation Conference to be held next June 21 and 22, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Apertura Regional de Galileo Masters con la participación de la Comisión Europea y de Anwendusgzentrum GmbH (incubadora y business incubation centre)

Ocasión excepcional para la búsqueda de nuevas oportunidades de negocios y financiación.

La jornada estará enfocada por un lado a dar pistoletazo de salida al concurso de ideas Galileo Masters dando a conocer los premios regionales y especiales del mismo y por otro lado la Comisión Europea presentará los programas y oportunidades de negocio financiadas desde Europa.

Lantek and Vicomtech-IK4 were nominated for their SIMCUT project by the 3D Simulation awards at the 10th Annual Industrial Simulation Conference, ISC 2012.

This project has meant the collaboration of both centres in the creation of the design and development of a real-time 3D simulation tool for metal cutting for the machine tool sector.

This nomination for the 3D Simulation awards is the recognition of all the results of an excellent work developed by these companies within the joint innovation project, as well as the important advancement this 3D simulation tool for metal cutting means for the market, since SIMCUT gives companies using any kind of metal cutting machine in their activity a virtual environment that simulates what the machine will do before final work is done. Users will this way have a vision of the final result and will be able to foresee and to react any inconvenience or changes, and will also be able to arrange and optimize materials.

SIMCUT is considered as an absolute innovation project, as there is currently no such a solution in the market. SIMCUT is the result of a two-year collaboration between Lantek and Vicomtech-IK4, and the reply to continuous demand of companies in the metallurgical sector for a solution that will decrease costs and, at the same time, adds value to processes, offering this way a real preview of works. This initiative is this way a clear proof of the compromise these companies have towards innovation and development of efficient solutions that contribute added value and guarantee the correct decision-making in productive processes.

Recently the Metaverse1 project received the Silver 2011 ITEA2 Outstanding Achievement Award at the ITEA2 / Artemis co-summit in Helsinki after a final plenary project presentation. About 15 candidate projects were in the running to receive this price.
Metaverse1 project deals with the interoperability between Virtual worlds (as for example Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, Active Worlds, Google Earth and many others) and the Real world (sensors, actuators, vision and rendering, social and welfare systems, banking, insurance, travel, real estate and many others) and delivered a standardized global framework.
Through the development of this project, Vicomtech-IK4 has contributed actively on the specification of avatars of the new international MPEG-V standard.

Vicomtech-IK4 has participated in the creation of the Open URC Alliance, a non-profit association in pursuit of development and boost of their own technology and standards for the Information Society to be reachable for everyone, breaking this way electric and electronic devices’ accessibility barriers.
The objective of the alliance is to integrate every user, especially those with lack of knowledge and/or functional diversity and guaranteeing Universal Access. To do so, The Open URC Association is developing standards and technologies to provide people with Universal Remote Controls (remote controls) prepared and adapted. They will also create a stamp every device will have so that they are more accessible.
The Open URC Alliance was officially founded in Saarbrücken, Germany, and Vicomtech-IK4 is a founding member of the same. The Alliance is opened for other organizations, such as companies, public institutions or research organizations, to participate. It has the approval of the European Commssion, and it was created as a result of different European research projects on e-Inclusion (I2HOME, VITAL, BRAINABLE and others).

Biodonostia, the centre part of which is Vicomtech-IK4’s Biomedicine department, has obtained an excellence degree after the Carlos III Health Institute, ISCIII, recognized them as a health research institute. This is an external sign of the importance of its scientific work.
Biodonostia is composed of 21 working groups and around 270 researchers, who focus their activities on six areas: Neuroscience; Digestive, cardiovascular and other systematic diseases; Infectious diseases; Epidemiology and public health; Regenerative medicine and Bioengineering, and they are working to create the new Oncology area.

Dr. Mª Teresa Linaza, Head of the eTourism and Heritage Department, chaired a round table and work session on the application of Future Internet technologies on the tourist sector last October 21. Different tourist agents participated in this session, such as AEI Tourism Cluster of Extremadura, the board of tourism Málaga-Costa del Sol, RuralGest or restaurantes.com, as well as technology-based companies like Bitext or IActive.
The objective of the round table was to detect the requirements of the tourist sector for the Future Internet. Aspects such as use of the current Internet and IT and Communications within the sector were therefore analyzed, as well as the foreseen technological needs for next years, the opportunities Future Internet should offer, and or necessary initiatives to implant said technologies in the sector. This round table is framed within the conference organized by the es.Internet platform held last October 20th and 21st in Madrid. On the first day, the focus was set on giving a general view of the different aspects regarding Future Internet. On the second day the focus was set on the analysis of the impact of these technologies in different strategic sectors such as tourism, energy or agriculture and feeding.

Vicomtech-IK4 joined the Web3D Consortium in June 2011, and since then has participated in the Medical Working Group for Advanced Standards for the Display and Handling of Patient-Based Multi-Dimensional Medical Information. The Web3D Consortium is formed by world renowned organisations, such as NASA and Virginia Tech University (USA), Fraunhofer-IGD and DFKI (Germany), University of Suwan and KAIST (Korea), amongst others.
The Web3D Consortium was formed to provide a forum for the creation of open standards for Web3D specifications, and to accelerate the worldwide demand for products based on these standards through the sponsorship of market and user education programmes.
Today, the Web3D Consortium is utilising its broad-based industry support to develop the X3D specification, for communicating 3D on the Web, between applications and across distributed networks and web services. Through coordinated effort with the ISO and the W3C, the Web3D Consortium is extending its standardisation activities.

Dr. Carlos Toro, researcher at Vicomtech-IK4, has chaired the 'Recent Trend in Knowledge Engineering' session within KES 2011 (15th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems) held in Kaiserslautern (Germany) last September 12, 13 and 14.
There were 12 high-quality research articles presented to this session explaining latest advances on different application fields of semantic technologies and knowledge engineering. This session was prepared together with the University of Newcastle, Australia, specifically with the KERT group, headed by Prof. Dr. Edward Szczerbicki and Dr. Cesar Sanín. Through this action Vicomtech-IK4 is once again in the vanguard of the investigation in such technologies.
As a result of a continuous collaboration for over 6 years as part of the conference’s editorial committee, Vicomtech-IK4 will be co-organizer of KES 2012, together with the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU).
KES 2012 will attract some 300 delegates of all over the world that represent a critical mass on investigation, that not only lead world vanguard on Knowledge Engineering, but also collaborate with the opening of these technologies to our environment.
KES 2012 will also edit some special editions of renowned journals and, apart from the classical sessions, will also add 6 parallel sessions in which different groups of interest will share their advances regarding this interesting area of knowledge.

Setting Global Standards among Real and Virtual Worlds (Metaverse1), a European Project financed by ITEA 2 Program, has been selected by the Steering Group and Board Support Group as one of the three outstanding projects that have concluded since the 2010 Co-Summit and that have been invited to present at the annual Co-Summit. These projects have also been nominated for the ITEA2 Achievement Award 2011. The final Golden Award winner will be announced at the 2011 ITEA&ARTEMIS Co-summit.
The Metaverse1 project will provide: a standardised global framework enabling the interoperability between Virtual worlds (for example; Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, Active Worlds, Google Earth, and many others) and the Real world (sensors, actuators, vision and rendering, social and welfare systems, banking, insurance, travel, real estate and many others).

On Friday, June 17 Ander García defended his Ph.D. dissertation tittled 'Intelligent Personalised Tourist Route Generation' at the IT Faculty, obtaining the Dr. Degree.

On Wednesday, May 11 Gorka Marcos defended his Ph.D. dissertation tittled 'A Semantic Middleware to enhance current Multimedia Retrieval Systems with Content-based functionalities' at the IT Faculty, obtaining the Dr. Degree.

This laboratory shows the current trend in medicine, which supports prevention, is in pursuit of personalized medicine, and is prone to minimally invasive surgical treatment and extra-hospital or outpatient care.
This laboratory is divided into two different spaces. One of them represents a digital hospital, with an integrated cutting-edge operating room.
The other one represents an advanced technology provided digital home in which you can recreate a futuristic vision of patient care in domestic environment.
In this laboratory different R&D projects are developed, such as, minimally invasive surgery, image assisted surgery, rehabilitation and tele-care. The objective is to create innovative technological developments that can be applied in a close future into clinical practice.
The total investment for the works and equipment exceeded 2 million Euro.

Dr. Carlos Toro, researcher at Vicometch-IK4, organizes together with the University of Bremen and DFKI the 'Ontology and Semantic web for Manufacturing' Workshop (OSEMA 2011). This workshop is held within the 8th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2011) and will take place next May 29th to June 2nd in Heraklion (Crete, Greece).
ESWC has become one of the main conferences in Europe related to knowledge engineering. This Vicomtech-IK4 is once again in the vanguard by organizing key events regarding such important technologies.

Last March 14th the meeting to set AMETIC’s R&D&i Action Area was held, and Vicomtech-IK4 is a member of it. During this meeting they defined the main objectives for the Action Area. These objectives are an important bet on Innovation within the sector represented by AMETIC (Multisectorial Association of Electronics, ICT and Communication companies).

Eduardo Carrasco, member of Vicomtech-IK4’s Applications for the Independent living group, participated on the Andalusian Conference for the innovative experience exchange in home treatment services held in Malaga last February 17. His presentation was based on the innovative projects headed by Vicomtech-IK4 and the applications of the developed technology on the home care field.

Dr. David will participate as a speaker at the 3D3C Worlds Meeting to be held next March 23rd in Israel. On this session the different members of the Metaverse1 consortium will present the results of the project, the aim of which was to provide a standardized global framework that enables the interoperability between virtual worlds and the real world.

IK4 is pursuing its growth strategy with the incorporation of new partners into its project. Following the recent incorporation of Lortek, it is now the turn of the Bizkaia-based R+D centre Azterlan, which has signed up to an agreement to join our alliance and reinforce its capacities. It is a research centre with over 30 years’ experience, located in Durango (Bizkaia) and specialising in metallurgy.

Forty top representatives of the Basque Country’s companies, institutions, technology centres, universities and scientific and technological players met at the headquarters of the AIC (Automotive Intelligence Centre) in Amorebieta (Bizkaia) to form the IK4’s Strategic Committee. The aim of this new body is to advise the management of the Basque Technology Alliance and to monitor the development of its strategy with it, by supporting it in its aim to establish itself as a top Basque reference in technological research applied to companies.
Further information.

The European Commission has emphasized the I2Home project, channelled into creating domotics’ tools for elderly and handicapped people. The Basque centres Vicomtech-IK4 and Ingema (Matia Gerontology Institute) promote this project, as well as bodies from different countries, such as Siemens in Germany. According to Brussels, making ICT available to those people who cannot live independently is one of the key objectives of the European Digital Agenda.




		© 2001-2013 Vicomtech-IK4		2013/04/29 Home Page

News