UPV researchers develop a digital twin to incorporate AI into rural areas of Empty Spain

VALENCIA, Oct. 30 (EUROPA PRESS) -

A team of researchers from the Computer Technology and Artificial Intelligence Group (GTIIA) of the Valencian University Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN) of the Universitat Politècnica de València is developing the modeling of a digital twin and a simulator to incorporate Artificial Intelligence ( IA) to rural areas of emptied Spain.

This work is part of the COSASS project (COordinated Intelligent Services for Adaptive Smart areas), an initiative that aims to "apply AI techniques in these areas of the country in which, although there is great digitalization in large crop areas, There is a lack of manpower that cannot control problems such as lack of connectivity or saving batteries," as reported by the academic institution in a statement.

"For this reason, intelligent adaptive areas are necessary," said the main researcher of this project at the VRAIN institute of the UPV, Carlos Carrascosa.

The GTIIA team of researchers already have results for the verification of plant diseases by detecting them from their leaves.

"In addition, we are specialists in distributed Artificial Intelligence systems, a development that is especially ideal for devices distributed around crop fields," added Carrascosa, who pointed out that "these can share information and, as one of them learn, learn all".

"To do this, we propose using techniques such as federated learning, which is formed by a set of IoT devices that are distributed and that share the learning of a device by everyone without the need to share their own data, which makes the learning evolve. faster than in isolation, but maintaining the privacy of the data that is being used to learn," the expert explained.

Together with the GTIIA-VRAIN team of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, two research groups from the University of Salamanca and the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid participate in the project.

The project, which is in its first year of a total of three, proposes actions on two levels. Thus, there is a lower level that is the Internet of Things (IoT) so that the devices in the fields are capable of adapting and making decisions autonomously when adversities and problems occur that are not typical for the system.

Added to this is a cloud level that allows, through these digital twins of the systems and their environments, to reflect what is happening - even with predictions of what it can do when the system is disconnected from its digital twin-- and test modifications, changes and extensions to the system without having to deploy those changes to the real system.

The Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN) of the UPV is made up of eight research groups that have more than thirty years of experience in different lines of AI research.

The creation process of VRAIN began in 2019, the result of the union of six research groups. In 2020, it merged with the PROS Software Production Methods Research Center and in 2021 it was finally established as a University Research Institute with the approval of the Valencian Generalitat.

Currently, it has 160 researchers divided into nine research areas. These nine areas on which its research activity revolves mean that its developments are applied to a large number of strategic sectors such as health, mobility, earth sciences, smart cities, education, social networks, agriculture, industry, privacy/security, robots self-employed, services and energy, and environmental sustainability among others.

These activities have been financed by more than 128 projects obtained through competitive financing, mainly from the European Union, but also from the National Research Plan, the Valencian Research Plan and Technology Transfer Projects.