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Story 28 November 2022
Public

Cyber Monday: Meet 3 cybernetic EIC-funded projects leading EU’s innovation

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Mariana Marques

With the raise of technological development, we are able to see that complex technologies are being introduced in our daily lives. So, this Cyber Monday, we decided to focus not only on EIC-funded companies that can support you with online shopping, but also on other solutions that are using cutting-edge technologies. Get to know these innovations related to artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality, that are improving users’ experiences in the health and business sectors. 

 

Alocalo: using AI to support local stores 

Nothing more appropriate for Cyber Monday than talking about an online platform that aims to advise you while shopping. Alocalo, EIC-funded company from Germany, offers an innovative technology whose core functionality is a browser plug-in that suggests local retailers to end users when they search for a product on a larger online shopping site. 

Alocalo has developed a search algorithm that is capable of identifying the displayed product obtained after the user search and suggesting, in less than one second, a replacement in a local store. Besides this, the plug-in informs the user about the local shop’s name, the distance to it, the address and the contact data. To achieve these functionalities, Alocalo’s technology counts with the first self-learning AI platform for retailers.

The objective of this platform is to help keep small retailers in business preventing them from losing market shares for big online competitors, while maintaining city centres alive with local stores. 

 

Gleechi: combining robotics & virtual reality to offer training programmes

Humans and machines are evolving to become ever more part of each other, for example to improve our daily work. EIC-funded Gleechi built upon their founders’ research on robotics and developed VirtualGrasp, the first standard software solution that creates realistic real-time hand animation & hand-to-object interaction in virtual environments. 

With predictive and adaptive machine learning algorithms that can analyse the physical properties of a virtual object, their innovative technology is able to decipher the most appropriate and realistic grip formation for the hand model and snap to that position. VirtualGrasp also enables immersion in virtual reality (VR) for interaction with objects in virtual spaces. 

Gleechi is applying their technological solution to the custom creation of different training programmes using the company’s VR training platform. This platform utilises visual creation tools combined with previously developed environment templates that make it possible to design training sets suited to their customers’ needs. At the moment, Gleechi has 4 on demand trainings that cover the following areas: sterile technician; automotive (battery handling); production assembly; and, dental nurse training. As Jakob Way, CEO of Gleechi, told us, their training offer will continue to expand to different areas: “Thanks to our software suite we are able to provide trainings across several industries and are continuously launching towards new ones. In the coming months we are looking at launching packages towards areas such as learning to operate a crane, safe maintenance of electric vehicles among much else.”. 

Jakob also stressed the good impact of VR training: “This is not a method of the future, it’s a method of today. We have hundreds of students learning to become hospital workers by practicing all work tasks in a simulated environment from their homes. The research is very clear about this, virtual reality training is incredibly powerful for learning in general, but especially to learn hard skill tasks and we see more and more companies realising this.”.

 

Stasism: gamification to help with cerebral palsy treatment

Gamification is a method successfully applied for user interaction on different fields, but it has proven to be quite effective to promote health and well-being among people with disabilities, namely for patients with cerebral palsy (CP). A consortium of four organisations (from Norway, Ireland, Spain and Ukraine) has received EIC funding to implement the AbleGames project that led to the creation of Stasism – an innovative social-collaboration gaming platform to help people with CP to improve through physical therapy and peer community inclusion.

In the Stasism platform, users can interact with non-immersive virtual reality scenarios using balance sensors and smart vision systems based on machine learning models. Furthermore, artificial intelligence technologies are applied to constantly adapt the platform to each individual’s abilities to foster rehabilitation progress and social collaboration.

We talked with Kjetil Helland, CEO of HuginTech (project coordinator), that explained the advantages offered by Stasism: “Our platform lets you improve your physical therapy through play, find and play with new friends, and has a host of tools for doctors & therapists. It can be used both at home and in therapy centers.”. Kjetil continued to tell us about the success in project implementation: “It has been piloted in treatment centers around Europe in age groups varying from 3 to 70 and has been shown to be a very useful aid in the treatment of Cerebral Palsy - for example, resulting in improved balance after just 2 weeks of training.”. To conclude, Kjetil mentioned: “We are very proud of what we have created. And we expect to launch a commercial version of the platform in Q1 next year.

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