Thales is a world leader group for electronics and a key player in numerous markets such as aerospace, space, ground transportation, digital identity and security, physical and cyber security and defense. From the Bottom of the Oceans to the Depths of Space & Cyberspace, Thales’s Mission is to help customers master decisive moments by providing the right information at the right moment. Thales provides solution for Sensing & data gathering, Data transmission & storage, Data processing & decision making through its 5 domains: Digital Identity and Security, Defence and Security, Aerospace, Space and Ground Transportation. Over € 7bn are invested in digital for the last 5 years in Connectivity, Big Data, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence.
2021 figures show the impact of Thales with 16,2 billion euros in Sales, 81,000 people in 68 different countries and 1Bn€ invested in self-funded R&D (not included therefore R&D undertaken with external funding). 9 times winner of the TOP 100 Global Innovators, Research and development (R&D) is at the core of the Group, with its 3,000 researchers and 28,000 engineers dedicated to R&D. Thales has been developing state-of-the-art technologies to meet the most demanding requirements of customers around the world for decades. Today the Group has become a giant laboratory inventing the world of tomorrow, with a portfolio of 20,500 patents. Thales Research & Technology (TRT) France is the main multidisciplinary research unit of Thales, located on the Campus of Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau.
TRT research teams have very diverse skills ranging from materials elaboration (polymers, epitaxy of various semiconductors, superconductors, dielectric or magnetic thin films, ceramics, etc…), through component modelling, processing, testing, assembly and packaging, integration in appropriate demonstrators, to high-performance hardware and software architectures (manycore embedded architectures, safety-critical processing, formal verification, cybersecurity), high-level system modeling and visualisation, big data infrastructures, and decision-aid algorithms (optimization, multi-criteria decision aid, complex event processing, data science, information fusion, knowledge representation). All these allowing full validation of the technologies investigated before their transfer to Thales Group’s operational business units.
TRT is ULTIMATE’s Coordinator (Management and Communication tasks). TRT is also in charge of the AI algorithm evaluation WP. Indeed, TRT relies on its expertise in trustworthy AI algorithm engineering, verification through formal methods (e.g., abstract interpretation) and validation of data-driven or model-driven AI algorithms using statistical (e.g., sensitivity analysis, risk quantification). In the project, TRT works on Functional Data Analysis for anomaly detection and in combination of formal methods for hybrid AI algorithms to yield rigorous methodologies for hybrid AI algorithm evaluation.
Organisation website url: www.thalesgroup.com
Organisation (or lab) main address:
1 avenue Augustin Fresnel
Palaiseau,France
Robotnik is a leading European mobile service robotics company. Its activity is focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of autonomous mobile robots and manipulators for different applications in both industrial and academic fields: inspection, security, logistics, agriculture or construction, among others.
Since the beginning of its activity in 2002, it has sold more than 5,000 robots in 50 countries around the world and has participated in more than 60 European R&D projects.
Robotnik is formed by a multidisciplinary team qualified in various fields such as industrial engineering, mechanics, telecommunications and software development. Each of Robotnik’s professionals bring their know-how to mobile service robotics and make possible that the company has been in business for 20 years.
Robotnik participates in the ULTIMATE project as an end-user, providing a use case for the automation of a kitting process, that is the placing of several components with different sizes and shapes into an ordered set in a container, i.e., a kit.
To execute this use case, Robotnik provides an RB-KAIROS+, the mobile manipulator robot that will execute advanced AI algorithms to detect and identify the components on the workbench, compute the order to pick the components and where to place them, find the best grasping pose and calculate and follow the arm trajectories to execute the different operations.
This is an interesting use case from the Industry 4.0 perspective, as it gives the opportunity to easily customize the creation of kits for different industries and areas, such as in-house logistics or package preparation.
Organisation website url: www.robotnik.eu
Organisation (or lab) main address:
Robotnik Automation SL
Ronda Auguste y Louis Lumière, 6, 46980 Paterna, Valencia
Since its founding in 1827, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. We are Sweden’s largest technical research and learning institution and home to students, researchers and faculty from around the world dedicated to advancing knowledge.
KTH is working with industry and society in the pursuit of sustainable solutions to some of humanity’s greatest challenges: climate change, future energy supply, urbanisation and quality of life for the rapidly-growing elderly population. We are addressing these with world leading, high-impact research and education in natural sciences and all branches of engineering, as well as in architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history and philosophy. Almost two-thirds of the SEK 4 billion turnover relates to research. Basic and applied research are performed side-by-side at KTH and interdisciplinary research is conducted in parallel with work in specific fields. This approach encourages versatile solutions and the innovative climate creates many opportunities to realise great ideas. Our educational programmes foster a new generation of engineers, architects, teachers and undergraduate engineers. KTH embraces academia and the public and private sectors working together. We are part of extensive international research collaborations and participate in a large number of educational exchange or joint programmes with universities and colleges in Europe, the U.S., Australia, Asia and Africa.
The main objective of KTH is to conduct research studies and propose novel methodologies for enriching the capabilities of hybrid AI algorithms. The research considers algorithms for the purpose of situational awareness and anomaly detection, as well as algorithms capable of delivering control signals to the physical systems. The research will also perform improved functional accuracy and risk assessment in achieving the goals set forth by the definition of the use cases.
Specific objectives driving the research are:
• Modelling multi-criterion and heterogeneous datasets.
• Developing novel hybrid AI algorithms for situational awareness and anomaly detection based on physics-informed ML, FDA, auto-encoders, and lifelong learning.
• Designing innovative neural network architectures for decision-support systems using hybrid approaches, including PINN and Gaussian processes.
Organisation website url: kth.se
Organisation (or lab) main address:
Malvinas väg 10, 114 28 Stockholm
The French National metrology and testing Laboratory (in French, “Laboratoire National de métrologie et d’Essais” or LNE) is a public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC) attached to the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. It is the central support body for the public authorities in the field of testing, evaluation and metrology. Its action aims in particular to examine new products and assess their impact in order to inform, protect and meet the needs of consumers and national industry. In this context, it carries out measurement, testing, characterization and certification work on systems and technologies to support breakthrough innovations (artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, nanotechnologies, additive manufacturing, radioactivity measurement, hydrogen storage, etc.) for the benefit of the scientific, normative, regulatory and industrialcommunities.
LNE’s status guarantees the independence, neutrality and impartiality of its expert assessments. Guided by astrict policy of managing conflicts of interest with economic players in relation to the development of their products, LNE is therefore a privileged partner in the definition of a framework for the development of trustworthy AIs.
The LNE will participate on the evaluation aspects of the proposed Hybrid AI systems, helping on the protocols definition and both full-simulations and hybrid real/simulation setups using its LEIA facilities. In addition the LNE, with its participation in ISO, AFNOR and CEN/CENELEC, will push appropriate contributions to the standards under development from the results of the project.
Organisation website url: https://www.lne.fr/en
Organisation (or lab) main address:
1 rue Gaston boissier
Paris,France
TECNALIA is the largest centre of applied research and technological development in Spain, a benchmark in Europe and a member of the Basque Research and Technology Alliance. We collaborate with companies and institutions to improve their competitiveness, people’s quality of life and achieve sustainable growth. We do it thanks to people who are passionate about technology and committed to building a better society.
We work with an increasingly strategic business relationship model based on trust, collaboration, and a shared technological approach, whereby our main scopes of action are: smart manufacturing, digital transformation, energy transition, sustainable mobility, personalised health, urban ecosystem and circular economy.
We are the first private Spanish organisation in contracting, participation, and leadership in the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and we are ranked third in European patent applications.
Tecnalia will bring its research capabilities and expertise in providing solutions related to statistical predictive models for system engineering companies and quantification of systems’ quality attributes during the lifecycle, including trustworthiness (safety, security, privacy, resilience, and reliability). This background is used for AI engineering where AI-enabled systems include AI algorithms and components. Tecnalia will also bring its research capabilities on XAI tools (local explanations, feature relevance estimation, counterfactual generation) for auditing black-box data-based models. And on advanced methods for estimating the epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty inherent to the context where AI-based models are deployed, including model agnostic (e.g. conformal prediction) and model-specific approaches (corr. evidential DL).
In the ULTIMATE project Tecnalia will research on how the integration of a hybrid-AI component into a system influences/modifies the whole system trustworthiness and how the hybrid-AI algorithm lifecycle activities (design, development, evaluation) performance influences the hybrid-AI algorithm trustworthiness. Also, Tecnalia will research on the generation of methods to assess the robustness and to explain the workings of the models that will be developed during the project. This will be carried out by means of confidence estimation techniques and post-hoc explainability methods.
Organisation website url: www.tecnalia.com
Organisation (or lab) main address:
Parque Científico y Tecnológico de Bizkaia
Astondo Bidea, Edificio 700.
E-48160 Derio (Bizkaia)
SPAIN
Łukasiewicz Research Network – Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements PIAP is a leading Polish research Institute, developing unique solutions in the field of industrial automation, ICT, security and defence technologies, mobile robotics and measuring devices.
Łukasiewicz – PIAP provides Polish entities and foreign partners with high quality solutions for over 50 years using the latest technologies in robotics, automation, measurement techniques and 3D printing, as well as space technologies. Łukasiewicz – PIAP offers wide, interdisciplinary experience in the fields of: information technology, industrial and mobile robotics, industrial automation, security and defence, telemetry and telecommunication, artificial intelligence and measuring devices. Based on this experience, Łukasiewicz-PIAP participates in both R&D and commercial product and service development. The Institute is also very active in realisation and coordination of international and national multi-partner projects and has a well-established cooperation within EC, NATO, EDA and ESA research programmes.
From April 2019 the Institute has been a part of Łukasiewicz Research Network – the third largest research network in Europe and a unique project of great commercial potential, providing attractive, comprehensive and competitive business solutions in the fields of automation, chemicals, biomedicine, ICT, materials, and advanced manufacturing.
Łukasiewicz – PIAP has a relevant role in the requirements gathering and description of scenarios to validate hybrid AI algorithms developed in ULTIMATE as well as provides a use-case for a robotic workshop – manufacturing workstation with mobile robots. The UC is exploring collaborative robotics that are able to handle different parts in a workspace shared with humans. Its objective is to achieve reliability and efficiency of robotic support through AI enhanced manufacturing as the robot operation is oriented towards handling the material and parts needed by the worker without any damage nor losing time and waste increasing. The robotic functionality is provided through ongoing H2020 projects APRIL and VOJEXT and will be integrated by Łukasiewicz – PIAP.
Organisation website url: https://piap.lukasiewicz.gov.pl/en/
Organisation (or lab) main address:
Al. Jerozolimskie 202, 02-486 Warsaw
ITTI is an IT company (SME) providing software solutions for companies and institutions in Poland and in other countries. The company operates since 1996 and is located in Poznan, Poland. Currently, ITTI has a team consisting of ca. 90 persons. The main goal of ITTI is to develop and provide innovative applications and dedicated software solutions which are adjusted to customer needs, e.g. systems supporting management of warehouses and manufacturing processes, systems supporting preparation of space missions or space situational awareness activities, e-health systems, simulation tools. Since 2001 ITTI has been actively involved in the research and development projects performed in the programmes funded by European Commission (recently Horizon Europe and formerly FP5, FP6, FP7, and Horizon 2020), European Defence Agency (e.g. Joint Investment Programme on Force Protection, Joint Investment Programme on CBRN) and national research programmes. In R&D activities the company cooperates closely with numerous universities and research institutes based in Poland as well as around Europe.
Moreover, ITTI collaborates with such organisations as European Space Agency (ESA) and European Network Information Security Agency (ENISA). ITTI is also one of the co-founders of Polish Space Industry Association. In the recent years ITTI was several times awarded with the prestigious “Cristal Brussels Prize” for being the most active and successful Polish company participating in EC FP programmes.
In ULTIMATE ITTI focuses on its AI explainability tool and hybrid anomaly detection methods. ITTI is also leader of task addressing definition of metrics and evaluation protocols with particular focus on effectiveness metrics for AI explainability. ITTI is also engaged in development of a high-dimensional data visualization toolkit, dissemination, market analysis and exploitation planning.
Organisation website url: https://www.itti.com.pl/en/home/
Organisation (or lab) main address:
ul. Rubież 46, 61-612 Poznań, Poland
Drawing on over 40 years of experience and a unique combination of skills, expertise and cultures, Thales Alenia Space a global space manufacturer delivering high-tech cost-effective solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth Observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. Governments and private industry alike count on Thales Alenia Space to design satellite-based systems that provide anytime, anywhere connections and positioning, monitor our planet, enhance management of its resources, and explore our Solar System and beyond. Thales Alenia Space sees space as a new horizon, helping to build a better, more sustainable life on Earth. A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), Thales Alenia Space also teams up with Telespazio to form the Space Alliance, which offers a complete range of solutions including services. We are willing to have a win-win approach shared both with our partners and customers. Thales Alenia Space recorded consolidated revenues of approximately 2.15 billion euros in 2021 and has around 8,000 employees in 10 countries with 17 sites in Europe and a plant in the United States.
Organisation (or lab) main address:
5 Allée des Gabians BP 99 – 05156 Cannes La Bocca Cedex – France
Thales Alenia Space contributes to the ULTIMATE project as an end-user, providing a use case (smart FDIR) for a AI-based automation of the on-board satellites FDIR system in charge of anomaly detection, isolation and recovery. As end-user we are especially involved in WP2 (Requirements study and system specification), WP3 (Rigorous evaluation of hybrid AI algorithms) and WP5 (Hybrid AI demonstration & assessment), in addition of our contribution on WP1 (project management) and WP6 (Communication, Dissemination, Exploitation, Standardisation, Certification). In the frame of our use case, hybrid AI is integrated and validated in a dedicated simulator.
CBRNE Ltd focuses on defense and security related issues addressing human behaviour, human factors, risk management and ethical issues. To support the “soft issues” mentioned above CBRNE Ltd has subject matter expertise on matters relating to CBRNE with operational experience in the field from both a defence and security perspective. Our work domain includes: Human Behaviour, Human Factors, Ethical Research Protocols, Ethics guidelines, Cultural Guidelines, Aide Mémoire/Best Practice Brochures, Legal and Governance Issues, CEN Standards and Procedures, Resilience/Vulnerability Assessment (Matrices), the organising of validation and demonstration exercises, war gaming and analysis and mitigation of human error. More recently CBRNE has taken on board AI expertise in the field of video analytics. CBRNE Ltd is an SME that has grown organically as opportunities arise, expanding its activities beyond the traditional security sector to address more civil orientated projects with emphasis on European Union Framework Programme 7 and Horizon 2020 and now Horizon Europe research and development activities. Examples include Project IMCOSEC (security of ISO Containers along the supply chain), Project CAMINO (Comprehensive Approach to cyber roadMap coordINation and development), Project D-BOX (Humanitarian De-Mining), Project SUBCOP (Person Born Improvised Explosive Devices [PBIED]), Projects PRACTICE, EDEN and PROACTIVE (ref CBRNE activities linked with civilians), Project MAGNETO (Multimedia Analysis and correlation engine for organised crime prevention and investigation), Project ENTRAP (Enhanced Neutralisation of explosive Threats Reaching Across the Plot), Project ALIGNER (Artificial Intelligence Roadmap for Policing and Law Enforcement) and most recently Project ULTIMATE (mUlti-Level Trustworthiness to IMprove the Adoption of hybrid arTificial intelligence)
Organisation Registered Address: Sportsman Farm, St Michaels, Tenterden, Kent, TN30 6SY
CBRNE Ltd is bringing its research capabilities and expertise in trustworthy and ethical AI, data management and research ethics. These competencies will be applied for research in ethical guidelines, ethical impact assessment and Misuse Risk Assessment (MRA) and AI governance. From a technical perspective CBRNE Ltd is providing a leading role in data modelling of heterogeneous multi criteria datasets as well as providing hybrid AI architecture for decision support systems. Finally, CBRNE Ltd is leading the Project ULTIMATE Advisory Board.
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