Three Leonardo-IIT joint laboratories, with 30 dedicated researchers, aim to develop new robotic, supercomputing and AI solutions. It includes an investment of one million euros per year for the next three years.
The new Leonardo-IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) joint research laboratories for the Presidium of Strategic Technologies for the Defense of the Nation have been launched in Genoa as part of Leonardo’s corporate research program.
The purpose of the joint laboratories is to develop three areas important for the future development of defense applications in the space and emergency sector: high-performance computing (supercomputing), robotic systems for industrial use integrated with artificial intelligence, and the restoration of these systems. Unstructured environments.
The agreement provides employment for approximately 30 researchers working in these three areas with an annual investment reaching one million euros for Leonardo and the IIT.
The Leonardo-IIT joint laboratories will be a national reference point (and internationally) for the development of digitization of industrial processes and technologies, and will help to better explore the potential of digital design and virtual environments. Robotics, monitoring, control and prediction are the most advanced frontiers of digitization, which the Leonardo-IIT joint laboratories are focusing on. Digital design saves up to 80% time in the development phase, reduces costs and can reduce consumption by up to 25%.
High-performance computing (supercomputing), a key component of digitization, is the basis of Leonardo’s concept of convergent innovation. One of the most prominent laboratories at the international level was born from the common factor of HPC (High Performance Computing) capabilities of IIT and Leonardo and was made possible by the capabilities of Leonardo’s DaVinci-1 supercomputer and IIT’s Franklin supercomputer. This will enhance the entire HPC community of the country and the national digitization process.
The joint laboratory will greatly increase technical capabilities in high-performance computing, work with more advanced technologies and open to quantum computing. These systems enable a large number of operations to be performed in real-time that a traditional computer would take days, months or years to perform. New numerical models and new computational codes will be developed to increase technical independence and enable ad hoc proprietary applications, for example, fluid dynamics calculations of aircraft wing profiles. Modeling of more complex physical phenomena, such as the turbulent flow of airfoils, requires enormous computing power to help greatly accelerate the design and testing processes.
In the medium term, new mechanisms for green computing will be developed together with an eco-sustainable approach aimed at reducing energy consumption and the environmental impact of the sector as a whole. The European goal is for the entire cloud and data center sector to be carbon neutral by 2030 (today, data centers consume 5% of the energy produced in the world, and this percentage continues to rise). This goal can be achieved through the optimization of numerical computation codes.
In this context, a joint laboratory dedicated to HPC is studying additional green systems that can be applied to supercomputing machines. These include automatic shutdown of unused circuits, energy supply from alternative sources or more efficient cooling methods derived from natural resources (use of water or water evaporation from a river or aquifer). These devices allow 30% energy savings.
The development of robotic systems integrated with artificial intelligence for industrial applications represents an additional area of collaboration. By adopting hybrid solutions for interaction between humans and robotic systems, digitization of industrial production areas can create safer environments, planned and predictive management, better quality of logistics and products, and after-sales optimization. , thanks to the integration of advanced monitoring systems for planned maintenance and predictive warning indicators.
Several robotic teams will be explored to perform cargo lifting, navigation and storage tasks.
Another area of research at the Leonardo-IIT Joint Laboratory is the research and development of robotic technologies used outside industrial environments to operate in unstructured environments. Such environments provide the adaptability of robotic systems in unpredictable situations, critical environmental conditions and the ability to operate autonomously. Applications mainly concern space – instruments on planets and satellites use robotic systems in radiation, significant temperature variations and particularly difficult operating conditions – and in emergency situations during natural disasters.