Nokia establishes robotic lab at Indian Institute of Science

 In a recent announcement, Nokia has partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), one of the region’s leading institutes and universities for research and higher education in science and engineering. 

As part of the partnership, the two will collaborate to establish the Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Networked Robotics. The CoE will promote the company’s interdisciplinary research into robotics, advanced communication technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop socially relevant uses for the technology in the emergency management, agriculture and industrial automation industries

The CoE will also promote engagement and cooperation between academia, startups and industry ecosystem partners when it comes to research and development, supporting the government initiatives of ‘Start-up India’. 

Once established the state of the art network robotics lab will be available to the IISc community as well as its ecosystem of partners for advanced research projects. Such projects could include designing next-generation networks and AI applications for solving pertinent social problems. 

To aid the research and development of end-to-end use case technology solutions, Nokia will share its expertise in next generation network innovations and leverage the technical expertise in robot orchestration, robot network controller and human-robot interaction of Nokia Bell Lab.

IISc will also provide its in-house expertise in house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems and engage its cross disciplinary faculty and researchers.Use cases that will be explored as part of the collaboration include:

• Drones for remote management of agricultural orchards, promoting water conservation and avoiding human contact with pesticide
• Drones using a 5G wide area network to gather situational information, for first responders to quickly access affected areas during disaster relief
• Drones to anticipate crop fires

In addition the collaboration will contribute to standards development, information research, capacity building and human resources development in cutting edge technology. The Nokia CoE will also facilitate close interactions with stakeholders of the ecosystem for the exchange of ideas and symbiotic development of end-to-end use cases.

“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,” commented Professor G Rangarajan, Director, IISc.

“Emerging technologies such as the 5G have potential to enable an entirely new array of use cases with a profound 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 groundbreaking use cases,” added Sanjay Malik, Senior Vice President and Head of India Market, Nokia.

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