“It is crucial for Gipuzkoa´s future to take advantage of the economic and social potential of artificial intelligence”

The  president of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, Markel Olano, and the deputy of Economic Promotion, Tourism and Rural Areas, Jabier Larrañaga, visited the Technological Center Vicomtech, located in the Scientific and Technological Park of Gipuzkoa in Donostia. They learned about the latest technological advances in fields such as industrial artificial vision and intelligence, autonomous mobility, data intelligence and visual analytics. “For Gipuzkoa to successfully confront the digital transformation of our economy and society, it is crucial to fully develop the potential of these technologies, generate value from data management through artificial intelligence and other related innovation areas”, has affirmed the president. 

After learning about the projects promoted and developed by Vicomtech, Olano has affirmed that Gipuzkoa “Counts with the foundations to take advantage of the economic and social potencial” of artificial intelligence, having an industry that is strongly and “decisively” betting on digitalization and a series of innovation centers that accumulate “a lot of experience and advanced knowledge” in these matters. As the president commented, it is a “vital element for Gipuzkoa´s future” since the technological field can generate a significant increase in enterprises´ competitive and innovative capacities, without disregarding that “the goal should not be other than to combine the improvement of products and production systems with the support of people´s work and lives”. 

In that sense, Olano has committed, among other aspects, to continue helping in the digitalization of production processes (industry 4.0), business and cybersecurity models that are  part of the economic base of Gipuzkoa, personalized health care and autonomous & connected mobility, the use of digital technologies in the creative and cultural industrial fields, as well as the gastronomic value chain and completing key projects for data management digitalization, and the execution and provision of public services from the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council. The last line of action takes place in the project Gipuzkoa Digitala of Etorkizuna Eraikiz. 

In the visit, the president was able to gain first-hand knowledge in the national and international positioning of Vicomtech in the field of artificial intelligence applied to different sectors like automotive and autonomous & connected mobility, industry, health, as well as language and security technologies. Also, hand in hand with Vicomtech´s experts, they learned about real life cases of exchange of these technologies to enterprises, witnessing how companies of all sizes and digitalization levels have improved their products and processes, strengthening their competitiveness in the market. 

From Vicomtech, the general director, Julián Flórez, has participated in the meeting; deputy director, Jorge Posada; and the directors of Data Intelligence for industrial processes, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Advanced Industry & Manufacturing, Speech and Natural Language Technologies, Digital Health and Biomedical Technologies, Igor G., Olaizola, Oihana Otaegui, Iñigo Barandiaran, Arantza del Pozo and Iván Macía, respectively. 

Supported Projects

During the last two years, the provincial department of Economic Promotion has supported the different innovation lines promoted by Vicomtech in the field of artificial intelligence, through the financial programme for I+D+i projects of the Technology & Scientific Network. The Centre from San Sebastian has received in the last years more than 400.000 euros in order to deepen the Research projects in areas like rail mobility, smart management of data and data analytics. 

Through the project VICASENS, for example, Vicomtech has developed advanced vision solutions in order to measure and monitor rail infrastructures. Having an accurate knowledge of the state of the track and catenary allows for a more efficient planification of the maintenance work, while saving on costs and execution time. The project, in collaboration with CETEST, has as a goal to develop new advanced demonstrators suitable to be fixed on rail vehicles, that enable the acquisition of information of the infrastructure in order to predict its state, with the final goal of establishing predictive maintenance guidelines of the railway vehicle. 

In addition, in the initiative called DIOGENES, Vicomtech was able to acquire equipment to develop a server of smart and efficient data with the objective of creating a high performance architecture storage and its smart management. When it comes to the development of artificial intelligence, data management is crucial, hence the design and development of a smart server that manages and stores this data is highly important. 

Lastly, the technological center is developing, with support from the Provincial Council, a project named DataNxt, Platform of Reference for Analytic Processes and Data Science. Vicomtech has 20 years of experience applying Artificial Intelligence techniques and data analytics, which has evolved into the creation of various libraries that include functionalities for virtual reality, automatic translation, artificial vision, processing of data, etc.