Nokia to set up robotics lab in IISc

Nokia on Tuesday announced a collaboration with Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to set up a Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for networked robotics.

"The CoE will promote interdisciplinary research involving robotics, advanced communication technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop socially relevant use cases across areas like emergency management, agriculture and industrial automation," said Nokia in a statement.

"The centre will promote engagement and cooperation between academia, start-ups and industry ecosystem partners in research and development of use cases. This centre supports and aligns with the government initiatives of Start-up India," the statement said.

The Nokia CoE, a state-of-the-art network robotics laboratory, will be available to the IISc community and its ecosystem partners for advanced research projects involving designing next-generation networks and applications of Artificial Intelligence for solving pertinent social problems.

Nokia will share its expertise in next-generation network innovations and leverage Nokia Bell Labs’ technical expertise in robot orchestration, robot network controller and human-robot interaction to aid the research and development of the end-to-end use case technology solutions. IISc will engage its cross-disciplinary faculty and researchers, and provide its in-house expertise in algorithms, drones and robotic systems.

"This is a critical initiative and it will help us move closer to finding technology-powered solutions to enrich our lives,” said Professor G Rangarajan, Director, IISc.

Some of the use cases which the collaboration will explore include using drones for remote management of agricultural orchards to promote water conservation and avoid human contact with pesticide, quickly accessing the affected areas during disaster relief and anticipating crop fires, the statement added.