The Eurecat technology centre has rolled out more than 500 artificial intelligence projects with large corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises over the last 10 years which have helped to drive the digital transformation of the business sector, ranging from optimising and improving industrial processes and product customisation to services in cybersecurity, risk prediction, efficiency and sustainability.
In these latter areas, AVENTEC, an innovative engineering and digital solutions company for urban water cycle management set up by Aigües de Vic, and Eurecat have built the Aqua360 platform which taps artificial intelligence technologies to predict chlorine depletion in the water network.
Eurecat has helped Bigle, a legal tech company specialising in automating legal operations, to develop its discriminative artificial intelligence technology, an innovation that allows the legal departments of large corporations to automatically identify metadata and contractual clauses. This unlocks valuable information which until now had remained buried in unstructured contracts, converting this difficult-to-exploit data into structured assets which are accessible to and usable by companies.
With Eurecat’s support, ControlCat has embedded advanced artificial intelligence processes into a new software platform called IdenTools which allows real-time traffic characterisation, pattern detection, mobility flow prediction and generating smart alerts which can be implemented to optimise public safety and urban efficiency.
This technological solution, which has also led ControlCat to establish the spin-off IdenTools, enables the data gathered to be turned into strategic information to improve mobility management, enhance urban security and power the development of smart cities. The partnership with Eurecat has made it possible to leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology developed specifically for Identools, bolstering its value proposition as a preeminent smart mobility and urban security platform.
Eurecat has also been involved, in conjunction with the Secretariat for Digital Policies in the Ministry of Business and Labour, in developing a new tool for 3Cat anchored in deep learning and generative artificial intelligence models. This tool is a journalistic assistant designed to generate descriptions of photographs and improve accessibility to the news.
This is one of the Impact Projects conducted by the Centre of Innovation for Data Tech and Artificial Intelligence (CIDAI) as part of Catalonia’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy, in this case to meet the challenge posed by 3Cat to streamline the work of its editorial teams and shorten the time spent by news professionals on routine supervision tasks.
A decade driving the rollout of artificial intelligence
Eurecat has been “supporting companies for almost a decade in embracing and deploying artificial intelligence, identifying market opportunities, trends and needs and translating this into an impact on the bottom line and also on society and the environment,” says Lali Soler, Director of Eurecat’s Digital Area.
This work with SMEs and large companies and corporations, she adds, “has enabled Eurecat to gain distinctive skills and experience in artificial intelligence, particularly in solutions calling for the integration of AI with other technologies and sector-specific knowledge.” In lockstep, Eurecat “has become highly specialised in the explainability of artificial intelligence and in identifying and correcting biases.”
Eurecat supports the uptake of AI-related tech with 36 per cent of projects in machine learning. They harness machine learning algorithms to help businesses analyse complex data and make accurate predictions with outstanding applications in sectors including healthcare, tourism and retail.
Also significant is process optimisation to enable businesses to be run more efficiently by cutting costs and increasing productivity; natural language processing (NLP), which simplifies interaction between humans and machines; predictive models, which are mainly used in agriculture and renewable energies to anticipate events and streamline resources; agent-based systems, which couple reinforcement learning and data processing to improve decision-making, and personalisation systems to tailor product ranges.
Likewise, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence is leading the technology centre to address the areas of text using large foundational language models and image through diffusion models. Here, it has specialised in developing advanced RAGS (Retrieval Augmented Generative Systems) which enable very precise contextualisation of large models, “making them extremely useful for information management or for generating state-of-the-art virtual assistants,” comments Lali Soler.
This multidisciplinary expertise “underlines Eurecat’s role as a strategic partner for businesses, especially SMEs, contributing significantly to their competitiveness in a global environment.”
Involvement in over 300 AI research programmes
Eurecat has taken part in over 300 European, national and regional research programmes on applying artificial intelligence in various sectors. “Our ongoing work with companies and organisations is enhanced and nurtured by Eurecat’s involvement and leadership in international projects in which we play an active role and contribute to cutting-edge developments,” argues Soler.
The most recent projects include TrusTroke, which is developing an AI-based federated learning platform to assist doctors, patients and carers in managing the acute and chronic phases of ischaemic stroke.
In AI explainability and AI Act compliance verification mechanisms for European small and medium-sized enterprises, it is engaged in the PISTIS project which is to build a data monetisation and trading platform for secure, reliable and controlled exchange and use of patented data assets and data-driven intelligence.
Eurecat also leads European projects in mobility, such as the Selfy project which taps artificial intelligence applied to cybersecurity for autonomous and connected driving, and in sustainability with the Impetus project, which harnesses AI to help roll out strategies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.
Partnership to power artificial intelligence in Catalonia
Since 2020, Eurecat has been coordinating the Centre of Innovation for Data Tech and Artificial Intelligence (CIDAI), a public-private initiative that is part of the Catalan Government’s Catalonia.AI strategy to promote knowledge transfer and joint projects between knowledge-generating organisations such as universities and research and innovation centres, technology and service providers and user companies and institutions seeking innovative applied artificial intelligence solutions.
Eurecat is also a member of the AI4ES network which brings together Spain’s foremost technology centres working in artificial intelligence.
