Description of the partners of the Mindtooth Project.
BrainSigns (BS) is a spin-off company of the University of Rome Sapienza founded in 2010 to apply neuroscience to industrial applications.
BS developed a new approach to measure electrical and autonomic activities in humans in order to measure their remarkable modifications related to cognitive status during the execution of different kinds of human tasks. In such a way its possible to provide related indicators like Emotion, Stress, Mental Workload, Attention, Interest, Memorization. The derived analyses are extremely interesting, innovative and complementary in several fields of applications where the same measures are traditionally based only on induction from verbal declarations during classic interviews where subjects responding can access only to their own conscious level. BrainSigns has been the first company in Italy which developed starting from research but going towards the market such techniques applied to the High Resolution EEG (HREEG), since 1989.
The core value of the company is the strong capabilities developed in recording physiological signals from the human body, mainly the brain, deriving indicators about internal cognitive and emotional states
We started working in 2010 in research and services activities and are now involved in different experimental and industrial areas such as:
• Analysis of Air Traffic pilots’ and controllers behaviour in training and operational conditions (i.e.: helicopters and jet pilots, and ATCOs, at work under different conditions, more and/or less stressful);
• Analysis of Human Factor in operational environments (i.e. parachutes, car drivers and road users, robotic-medicine surgeons), in order to establish the relationship between specific mental states and users’ performance;
• Neuromarketing evaluations (testing of the level of “mental” awareness, effort and appreciation related to commercial ads perception, website and social media, space and product experience);
• Analysis of liking and emotional engagement towards film and videogames (in order to verify their healty effects and to improve their liking).
• Analysis of impact of different medical devices (cochlear implants or surgical simulators) in the brain perception (in order to test the improvement of the cognitive capabilities or the increasing of the cortical connectivity during the device use).
The company has won several Italian prizes for best translational ideas from the research to the market: Start Cup Prize at time of foundation, “Bando Promotori teconologici – Provincia di Roma” in 2014, “Open Innovative PMI Award” by Bernoni Grant Thornton & Ministy of Economic Development, in 2017. Indeed the company is in the special register of the “innovative companies” held by the Italian Minister of Economic Development as well as in the register of “research companies” held by the Italian National Research Council. The last award consisted in 10.000 euro in kind of consultant services by Bernoni Grant Thornton that have been devoted to an assessment of the key value of the company and the available market that is at the basis of an Information Document for a starting operation of seeking Investment in order to support the scaling up of BrainSigns
In the area of the human mental workload evaluation during stressing and high responsibility tasks BrainSigns has patented a machine-learning-based algorithm for the operator’s mental state real-time evaluation (patent P1108IT00). Such procedures are the core value of the Mindtooth device and are at the base of the Mindtooth system. BS has already performed cerebral recordings of airlines pilots and ATCOs since many years and has a deep knowledge of the issues related to the real-time signal processing of such data in working environments.
Thanks to a high quality service provided, based on research knowledge the BrainSigns team has a strong reputation with top level companies at national and international level. The company team today includes all the scientific, management and basis of marketing knowledge as well as large number of relations with companies open to innovation and university in Italy as well as in foreign countries.
With this support it will be possible to spread the Mindtooth system employment in Europe and worldwide, including China where BrainSigns has a signed cooperation agreement (see supporting documents) with the University of Hangzhou Dianzi, in Hangzhou, for the development of the innovation in China.
Inside a scaling up plan of the company, the team will have to be reinforced with profiles that are more marketing and commercially oriented. This has been identified as a key issue to support a successful growth. The activity of scouting is also at a starting point at the moment of submissions of the present proposal.
IBM Israel Science and Technology Limited, better known as IBM Research – Haifa, was first established in 1972. Since then, the lab has conducted decades of research vital to IBM’s success. The lab is one of 9 research laboratories located outside of the United States, and has close working relationships with IBM Israel and its twin research laboratory in Zurich. In Haifa, 25 percent of the technical staff have doctorate degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related fields. Employees are actively involved in teaching at Israeli higher education institutions and in supervising post-graduate theses. R&D projects are being executed today in areas such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, cognitive computing, mobile platforms, healthcare and life sciences, verification technologies, storage, and more. The IBM Research – Haifa lab has three departments: Cognitive Analytics and Solutions, Computing as-a Service, and the Mobile and Industry Solutions.
The Mobile and Industry Solutions department, which will be directly involved in the Mindtooth project, focuses on thought leadership in product, solutions delivery, and strategy in the areas of IoT and Wearables. Its activities include the domain of people-centric IoT with recently developed solutions in the area of worker’s safety, cognitive-IoT with a focus on voice and bot-based interactions and analytics of such engagements, the digitization of cognitive user profiles that may emerge as a result of user interactions, various solutions to extend IoT productivity, and leveraging Blockchain as part of the infrastructure for certain IoT applications.
More info about the IoT and Wearables team work could be found here - http://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/dept/services/wearable.shtml
IBM is a partner in the Mindtooth project. IBM will participate in the specification of the worker safety use case and in implementing the corresponding application, catering SDK integration, designing and implementing the overall technical infrastructure utilising Edge and Cloud resources, and analysis contributions in the project, while also collaborating in the other work packages of the project, promoting results exploitation with the other partners aiming to achieve a market-level implementation that is rigorously validated to match the needs imposed by the three use-case scenarios.
The Instituto Tecnológico de Castilla y León (ITCL), created by the Official Industrial Engineering Associations of Burgos and Palencia in 1989, is a private non-profit organization which aims to contribute to the economic and social development of the region, supporting, promoting and facilitating the use of technology as a tool for competitiveness of the business network from a commitment to integration in the system of science-technology - company-society. ITCL develops the strategies needed to achieve the correct distribution and exploitation of the results of their R&D activity by facilitating the transfer of knowledge to companies, especially SMEs in Castilla y León.
ITCL is a technology centre integrated into the network of technological centres of the Junta de Castilla y León, and accredited by the development agencies of the regional governments of Cantabria (SODERCAN) and La Rioja (ADER) for the development of R&D&I projects, being a influential technological centre at regional and national levels in the field of production and development of R&D technologies. Its fundamental values are orientation to the customer, innovative character, technological reviews, efficiency and effectiveness, contribution of value to the customer. ITCL has a regular and growing presence in projects with national and international companies, with an intense and effective cooperative relationship with the other technology centres, universities and scientific institutions, and an ongoing commitment to the principles of excellence and continuous improvement and, most importantly, the will to continue to contribute to the generation of knowledge to provide a better services to businesses and organizations.
For the purpose of the project two research groups from ITCL will work in close collaboration lead by the Virtual and Augmented reality group.
The research group that will participate more actively in the development of the proposal is the research group of Virtual and augmented reality which was created in 2004 with extensive experience in the development of research and development projects in virtual reality, augmented reality, computer vision, computer graphics and simulation. The multidisciplinary group has successfully executed several national and European research projects, and furthermore has several publications and extensive experience in the implementation of the technology in the industry. Its experience in the area covers all aspects of the development of applications related to computer graphics: implementation of algorithms of artificial vision, techniques of SLAM, augmented reality, use of 3D graphics engines, modelling and texturing 3D models, programming on mobile platforms, integration of equipment, development of specific DLL, application of game theories, motion capture systems, development of driving simulators. All these skills are combined within the group to obtain high quality results in their research and products.
The Research Group of Applied Electronics and Artificial Intelligence Has extensive experience in the development of electronic systems (hardware) for industrial projects and production systems, data acquisition, communications and monitoring systems, as well as theoretical principles and the design of connectionist models for the identification and modelling of dynamic systems, ANN classifiers, CBR, Soft Computing, multivariate optimization, etc. It also collaborates in the organization of international scientific congresses, as well as with committees and organizations such as SOCO, HAIS, IDEAL, NABIC and ISDA. EAIA has more than 100 international publications, book chapters and lectures, and various software and industrial patent registrations.
The group is currently involved in the research and development of several projects, providing knowledge and research in the development of the application of electronic systems that, in many cases, incorporate and use Artificial Intelligence techniques to solve problems through data analysis, Modelling of systems and the optimization of multi-agent systems. The main line of research related to Applied Electronics is the development of biomedical devices. In this sense, the group participates in projects developing innovative applications, devices based on microcontrollers, designs with SMT (Surface Mount Technology), acquisition and control techniques, incorporation of intelligent routines and implementation of communications and incorporation of TICs. The line of research in Artificial Intelligence and Automatic Learning with Soft Computing focuses on hybrid and multi-agent systems, data analysis, data mining, genetic algorithms and the development of ANN models. In terms of this line of research, the group provides bioinformatics for genetic analysis, system optimization, rule mining, classification and modelling.
ITCL has a fully equipped laboratory in Computer Vision. The laboratory has various types of lighting for testing, cameras of different features, speeds and resolutions. In addition it has different sets of lenses and filters needed for test. The laboratory has several Computer Vision softwares in order to develop projects and the necessary human resources team to develop new algorithms specific for the new projects.
ITCL laboratories of Virtual and Augmented Reality; the laboratory has equipment consisting of 3D scanners, virtual reality headsets, helmets, See-through, workstations, motion capture systems, inertial sensors, virtual reality gloves, 3D screens and specific software.
Brain Products dedicates itself to the research and understanding of the human brain and nervous system. Founded in 1997 and now standing at nearly 70 employees alongside a global network of 46 distributors, the focus on positively impacting neuroscience made Brain Products a worldwide leading manufacturer of hard- and software solutions for neurophysiological research. Our solutions cover the fields of: ERP, BCI, mobile EEG, sleep EEG, EEG/fMRI, as well as behavioural sciences and similar disciplines. For us at Brain Products, a solution is only considered a solution if it covers all of the researcher’s needs, is easy to use and reliable. Therefore, we also develop caps, head mounts, sensors, various amplifiers, and complete integration with stimulation and recording software. Our products are used in over 1,000 universities and scientific research institutes around the world. Our customers are constantly publishing their results in well-known scientific journals. This network, along with many innovative collaboration partners, allows Brain Products to maintain our position as market leader in the complex and fascinating field of neurophysiology.
Regarding this proposal our tried and tested products build the basis for the planned developmental activities: We have the electrodes and the amplifiers, which have been successfully used in cars, planes and other challenging environments. Our hardware has also been proven in our long-term collaboration with BrainSigns: BrainSigns has conducted many experiments with Brain Products hardware and software in the automotive and aerial context. The products of Brain Products have been used several times in extreme conditions like microgravity (training of astronauts) and hypergravity (parabolic flights).
Urbe Aero was born in Sabaudia (near Rome) as Diamond Aero – exclusive agent of Diamond Aircraft Industries (DAI) – back in 2003. The company has evolved rapidly in their over 20 years of life in the aviation market.
In 2009, Domenico and Pasquale Calia’s business intuition made them decide to broaden their services, offering training to pilots and maintenance service for their aircraft and third party aircraft.
The company’s strategic location – in Rome Urbe airport – and the licence achieved from ENAC – The Italian Civil Aviation Authority – allowed Diamond Aero to start working as an ATO.
This is how Urbe Aero Flight Academy – one of the most important flight schools in Italy and Southern Europe with over 10 years of experience – was born.
Urbe Aero is currently site test of Mindtooth project. In particular, the Mindtooth system is currently under testing by involving pilots at different level of expertise, while performing simulated flight operations
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