INESC ID leads European project “iv4XR”
INESC ID leads European project on the use of AI for testing advanced interactive software systems as part of the H2020
The project, called iv4XR (Intelligent Verification/Validation for Extended Reality Based Systems), is led by INESC ID and will be developed by a European consortium, as part of the H2020 programme.
Project iv4XR will develop groundbreaking verification and validation technology for Extended Reality (XR) systems based on techniques from AI to provide learning and reasoning over a virtual world. With this technology XR developers can deploy powerful test agents to automatically explore and test the correctness of a virtual world as they iteratively develop and refine it. This includes testing user experience using socio-emotional AI. The project results will enable developers to conduct automated assessment of the quality of user experience, parameterized by different target groups of users, and different user experience goals.
Nowadays, Extended Reality (XR) systems (e.g. advanced interactive systems, such as, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)) have emerged in various domains, ranging from entertainment, cultural heritage, to combat training and mission critical applications. The development and authoring of such systems is an iterative process that also includes quality assurance to make sure that the resulting systems are correct and delivering a high quality user experience. As the complexity of these systems keeps increasing, the XR industry now finds itself confronting a soaring engineering challenge: paradoxically, XR’s fine grained and high level of interactivity and realism make such systems very hard and expensive to test. The current XR authoring and development toolset poses no XR testing technology beyond rudimentary record and replay tools
that only work for simple test scenarios. The iv4XR project will address this difficult challenge.
This project will be carried out by a team consisting of four companies (large and SMEs) representing the XR industry, three universities, and two research institutes. The team combines decades of expertise in advanced interactive systems, AI, and software engineering.
Consortium includes 9 organizations from eight different nationalities
Besides INESC ID, there are eight other partners, from seven different nationalities (Spanish, Italian, Dutch, English, French, Czech, and Swedish), involved in the project: UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT (The Netherlands), FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER (Italy), JUNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA (Spain), GAMEWARE EUROPE LIMITED (UK), AGI RESEARCH SRO (Czech Republic),THALES SIX GTS FRANCE SAS (France), THALES AVS FRANCE SAS (France) and UMEA UNIVERSITET (Sweden).
INESC ID is represented in this project by the GAIPS – Intelligent Agents and Synthetic Characters Group, which will be responsible for implementing this project. Rui Prada, as project leader, highlights the expected growth of the field and market of XR systems in gaming, training and operational domains. He argues that AI will have an important contribution in the development of complex XR systems and will be crucial to support the new emerging uses of XR.
Project iv4XR is scheduled to start in October 2019, has a duration of 36 months and will be receiving an investment of approximately 3.7 million euros.
Upcoming Events
Técnico Open Day 2024
Técnico Open Day 2024
On April 20, Instituto Superior Técnico will host the Técnico Open Day 2024, at the Alameda Campus. The event will consist of a science fair, guided visits, and interaction with members of the IST community.
Date & Time: April 20, 10h00-17h00
Where: Instituto Superior Técnico – Alameda Campus (Free Entry)
Summary: The 2024 edition of the Técnico Open Day will count with over 60 activities within the science fair, guided visits to the campus, including teaching and research laboratories, and contact with professors, researchers and students from IST. The event will be an opportunity to hold an interactive exhibition, displaying more than 40 research and innovation projects, and allowing all attendees to become more familiar with the School and its initiatives.
EV4EU will be part of the Open Day “Science Fair”, representing the project at the INESC-ID info stand from 10am to 5pm. Project researchers Cindy P. Guzman and Larissa Montefusco will be at the Info booth to share with visitors an overview of the project, its main goals and latest developments. Under the title “Electric Vehicles Management for Carbon Neutrality: Discover how Electrical Vehicles can contribute to the fight against climate change”, the EV4EU team will focus on explaining how can EV4EU plan solutions, and support the massification of electrical vehicles while contributing to the decrease of carbon emissions and global warming.
Full agenda of the event here
Know more about the project here
OLISSIPO Lecture: “Bioinformatics Infrastructure in Bielefeld and in Germany” by Jens Stoye (Bielefeld University)
On April 22, the OLISSIPO project will host the online lecture: “Bioinformatics Infrastructure in Bielefeld and in Germany” by Jens Stoye (Bielefeld University).
Date & Time: April 22, 10h00-11h00
Where: Online via Zoom here
Summary: “The German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI) has been set up in 2015 as a distributed infrastructure, coordinated at Bielefeld University. In addition, it forms the German node of the European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information (ELIXIR). Initially based on temporary project funding, since 2022 the project receives permanent support via Forschungszentrum Jülich, a member of the Helmholtz Association of national research centers in Germany. The de.NBI network provides comprehensive bioinformatics tools and services, bioinformatics training through a broad range of workshops and courses, cloud computing resources for academia in Germany and transfer of expertise between academia and industry. It consists of 24 partners, including the “de.NBI Resource Center for Microbial Genome Research in Biotechnology and Medicine at Bielefeld University” (MicroGenUniBi). MicroGenUniBi ensures the operation of the de.NBI cloud site at Bielefeld University which involves the installation and maintenance of hardware components, the configuration of software and the (re-)certification of the cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, MicroGenUniBi provides services in microbial bioinformatics and offers training courses introducing to the usage of these services on a regular basis. Currently, provided services cover the areas of pangenomics, metagenomics, metaproteomics and multiomics, classical bioinformatics software solutions, e.g. for alignment, comparative genomics and RNA structure prediction, and the web-based software “BIIGLE” for collaborative bioimage and video annotation. MicroGenUniBi works in close collaboration with the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and the initiative for the establishment of centralized research data competence centers, in particular for cloud technologies.”
Short Bio: Jens Stoye received his PhD degree (1997) in Bioinformatics from Bielefeld University, Germany. After postdoctoral positions at the University of California at Davis (1997-1998) and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg (1998-2001), he became head of the Algorithmic Bioinformatics group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin (2001-2002). Stoye has been a full professor for Genome Informatics back at Bielefeld University since 2002. His research interests are in algorithms for bioinformatics, genome-scale sequence analysis, metagenomics and comparative genomics. In 2017, he also became a member of the board of directors of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (ZiF), Bielefeld University’s Institute for Advanced Study. Since 2023 he has been ZiF’s Executive Director.
Educational Workshop on Responsible AI for Peace and Security (UNODA)
On June 6 and 7, The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are offering a selected group of technical students the opportunity to join a 2-day educational workshop on Responsible AI for peace and security.
The third workshop in the series will be held in Porto Salvo, Portugal, in collaboration with GAIPS, INESC-ID, and Instituto Superior Técnico. The workshop is open to students affiliated with universities in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, Oceania, and Asia.
Date & Time: June 6 a 7
Where: IST – Tagus Park, Porto Salvo
Registration deadline: April 8
Summary: “As with the impacts of Artificial intelligence (AI) on people’s day-to-day lives, the impacts for international peace and security include wide-ranging and significant opportunities and challenges. AI can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but its dual-use nature means that peaceful applications can also be misused for harmful purposes such as political disinformation, cyberattacks, terrorism, or military operations. Meanwhile, those researching and developing AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the risks that the misuse of civilian AI technology may pose to international peace and security and unsure about the role they can play in addressing them. Against this background, UNODA and SIPRI launched, in 2023, a three-year educational initiative on Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security. The initiative, which is supported by the Council of the European Union, aims to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the unintended consequences of civilian AI research and innovation for peace and security. As part of that initiative, SIPRI and UNODA are organising a series of capacity building workshops for STEM students (at PhD and Master levels). These workshops aim to provide the opportunity for up-and-coming AI practitioners to work together and with experts to learn about a) how peaceful AI research and innovation may generate risks for international peace and security; b) how they could help prevent or mitigate those risks through responsible research and innovation; c) how they could support the promotion of responsible AI for peace and security.”