Sector
Digital Electronics Security

Digital uses and media / Services

This sector breaks down into two sub-sectors:

  • digital and media applications: all players involved in producing and distributing real or virtual images for the cinema, audiovisual, animation, video games and multimedia markets. This sector includes e-learning and online services such as e-commerce. Content production for telecoms operators is also part of this sector.
  • services (finance, banking, training, etc.)

Examples of partnerships with companies in the sector

Verallia has adopted a digital twin to train people in key machine maintenance on its continuous production line

Partnership Carnot ARTS - Verallia

As demand for glass packaging increases, production units are working day and night. Thanks to Carnot ARTS, Verallia now has a virtual training application for preparing maintenance work on a crucial component: the gas mixer that powers its furnaces.

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Partnership Carnot ARTS - Verallia

Verallia has adopted a digital twin to train people in key machine maintenance on its continuous production line

As demand for glass packaging increases, production units are working day and night. Thanks to Carnot ARTS, Verallia now has a virtual training application for preparing maintenance work on a crucial component: the gas mixer that powers its furnaces.

Supporting Innovation

Verallia’s plant in Chalon-sur-Saône supplies glass containers to agri-food businesses and is home to the Verallia France Glass School, created to meet the specific needs of this industry. The plant has a single air/gas mixer that powers all of the glass melting burners. The slightest incident affects both production and delivery schedules. While the technicians who work on the mixer maintenance have obviously received theoretical training, it is not possible to make the mixer available to train them in how to handle specific incidents. To show technicians what to do in the event of breakdowns or damage, Institut Carnot ARTS has created a special simulator with a digital twin of the technical equipment that reproduces not only the machine, but all of the possible interactions as well.

The client needs

Verallia is an independent group with around 10 000 employees and 32 glass manufacturing plants spread throughout 11 countries. It is European leader – and the world's third largest producer – of glass packaging for beverages and food products. Verallia provides innovative, customized and eco-friendly solutions for more than 10 000 businesses worldwide. To meet growing demand, the Group is focused on adapting its existing production lines and is harnessing AI to bring it into the Industry 4.0 era. In the absence of a national glass manufacturing sector, Verallia founded its own Glass School over 50 years ago and approached the Carnot ARTS Image Institute to create an interactive simulation of work on the mixer with a view to training operators. During training sessions, the simulator is brought to life by a virtual reality mask that displays a simplified but functional replica of the machine, allowing operators to gain a better understanding of how the actual system works and the machine’s reactions.

Partnership

Institut Image is the part of Carnot ARTS that specialises in virtual immersion techniques. To design the simulator, it first had to analyse this complex process in order to define the appropriate level of simplification that would make the application functionally representative and faithful to the real system. The operator is thus immersed in a representation of the machine together with realistic possible interactions.
To develop this special digital twin, scientific obstacles needed to be removed, in particular to identify the correct cognitive load. This allows the operator to focus on the task in hand – a must for ensuring the relevance of the learning application. This is the case when operators have to move around so that neither task specialization nor unnecessary movements distract them, and during interactions with the virtual system to ensure that they have a clear idea of how to manipulate the different components.
The partnership has provided Verallia with an effective learning tool that limits the scope for incidents affecting a key component of its production process.

September 2021

Thanks to AI, Davi endows virtual assistants with emotions for a more fluid, more "human" relationship.

Partnership Carnot Cognition - Davi

Davi has leveraged a long-term partnership with LISN (Carnot Cognition) to set up the RETORIK platform, which may be used to create digital assistants that blend expertise and social skills to produce high-quality dialogue.

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Partnership Carnot Cognition - Davi

Thanks to AI, Davi endows virtual assistants with emotions for a more fluid, more "human" relationship.

Davi has leveraged a long-term partnership with LISN (Carnot Cognition) to set up the RETORIK platform, which may be used to create digital assistants that blend expertise and social skills to produce high-quality dialogue.

Supporting Innovation

Businesses have been deploying online user assistance since the early 2000s. These virtual assistants quickly became unpopular due to frequently awkward dialogue, inappropriate responses once queries went beyond the predicted context and the cold impersonal mode of communication, devoid of any empathy. As early as 2010, Davi began working on enhancing the human-machine relationship. It is currently marketing RETORIK which allows users to harness emotional AI to create digital assistants and experts (SMARTBOTs) that reproduce human form, language and emotions. The machine communicates naturally via a 3D image of a character capable of providing customised responses while expressing context-appropriate emotions. It becomes possible to forge relationships that are sufficiently interactive to help prospects or complete online sales, provide virtual training or create smart digital information points.

The client needs

Davi is a SAAS-based (software as a service) software publisher. It markets RETORIK which features tech solutions that enable machines to communicate naturally with humans by reproducing their social behaviour. 
These high added value human-machine interfaces run on two “engines”.  The conversational engine focuses on a clear understanding of queries and provides users with quality dialogue. It is rounded out by a socio-emotional engine that controls the non-verbal language of the animated virtual assistants who deliver responses coupled with accompanying facial expressions, hand movements, etc.
To develop these solutions and produce numerous applications in the field of conversational AI, Davi has been investing heavily in R&D and forging partnerships for many years. In particular, since 2016 it has been working with the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) and LISN (Interdisciplinary digital sciences research lab), which is part of the Carnot Cognition Institute and brings together AI experts and psychologists. This partnership has helped produce new expertise at the juncture of basic and industrial applied research that has given Davi a competitive edge in a rapidly-changing market.

Partnership

LISN is part of the Carnot Cognition Institute, which specialises in cognitive technologies that embrace users, their environment and different ways of interacting. The partnership has helped develop affective computing models within a rule engine based on mathematical logic that can calculate verbal responses complete with contextualised socio-emotional content. Experiments have also been conducted to develop a catalogue of non-verbal expressions that enhance customer relations and user experience and new dimensions have been defined for evaluating the perception of a conversational assistant in a commercial environment. The supervision of PhD students within the framework of CIFRE conventions (French State programme for research training in industry) have helped integrate the models within RETORIK and conduct experiments in natural usage situations with real users for the social sciences and humanities aspects. They have for example been testing and analysing the way in which visitors interact with a virtual assistant in a tourist office.
Davi has been able to use this partnership to become a big player in emotional AI, leading to strong growth in its revenue and workforce.

June 2021

Data Moove enhances the tourist experience with improved sources of information using flow aggregation

Partnership Télécom & Société numérique and Data Moove

Such products have been jointly developed under a strategic research partnership with Carnot Télécom & Société numérique (EURECOM).

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Partnership Télécom & Société numérique and Data Moove

Data Moove enhances the tourist experience with improved sources of information using flow aggregation

Such products have been jointly developed under a strategic research partnership with Carnot Télécom & Société numérique (EURECOM).

Supporting Innovation

Tourism is now an important industry.. It is economically dependent to, a large extent though, on the most appropriate response given to increasingly demanding, global and mobile travellers. Very much aware of the territorial challenges ahead, Data Moove aims at providing current and correct information to the right people in the right place at the right time. The start-up pulled off the ambitious venture by aggregating wisely a rather heterogeneous collection of data and selecting relevant information while making them available via a kiosk or mobile extension by means of its City Moove app. The partnership with a Carnot institute will enable the enterprise to go further and build a brand ecosystem of services to support the travellers.

The client needs

The territorial reform and progression towards more sustainable and competitive tourism require the territories to mobilise their resources and optimise their economic benefits. Data Moove thus offers both the local authorities and private stakeholders a solution providing real-time information for the tourist as to the many activities he can take advantage of during his stay. From the day it was founded back in 2014, Data Moove has been exploiting large volumes of public and private sources related to tourism and culture, in accordance with applicable regulation and in compliance with the strictest quality criteria. Given the huge amount of data and various types of contents, the continuous updating through social networks as well as the obvious redundancies, R&D support has been indispensable. For its part, Carnot Télécom & Société numérique works on structuring the social media data, while modelling variations and relationships by use of semantic graphs. The partnership has started as early as 2015.

Partnership

EURECOM, an engineering school part of the Télécom & Société numérique Carnot Institute based at Sophia Antipolis** quickly learned how to work through and around the constraints and objectives experienced by Data Moove. The partnership has facilitated the development of a major app function that can, on the one hand, be auto-calibrated to assess the degree of similarity resulting in duplicate entries and, on the other hand, categorise events. Saint Barthélemy has been the first location equipped with the relevant software. The application can naturally be set to adapt to every single type of digital environment and connect automatically to existing application programs. Due to the huge potential of the global tourism market, a project of interactive dialogs was launched accordingly in 2018. EURECOM and Data Moove pursue a comprehensive strategic research partnership which includes, beyond the R&D component, a system of financial support for companies. The solution range has revealed support and commitment across the partners and a broad spectrum of the parties involved, including the tourist information services.

May 2018

Iskn capitalises on current scientific research related to magnetic fields to streamline interface between traditional drawing and digital graphic design.

Partnership Leti - iskn

Three researchers have transformed more than 50 years of research on magnetoresistance by the Leti Carnot Institute into an app dedicated to raise public awareness of the arts, the design and education.

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Partnership Leti - iskn

Iskn capitalises on current scientific research related to magnetic fields to streamline interface between traditional drawing and digital graphic design.

Three researchers have transformed more than 50 years of research on magnetoresistance by the Leti Carnot Institute into an app dedicated to raise public awareness of the arts, the design and education.

Supporting Innovation

The production of a digital graphic usually requires the use of a graphic tablet or the scanning and editing of a paper drawing. The Slate system allows to use of a standard pad with  a simple drawing tool. It is equipped with a sheet of paper laid on an adjustable support and a pen fitted with a magnetic ring.
To record the drawing, each movement of the pen is sensed by the 32 tri-axial magnetometers embedded in the support. The data are sent over to a Smartphone or tablet in both real-time and off-line modes.
The associated software allows both the drawing to be manipulated, edited and exported for common formats.
Intended for the general public, the Slate system is distributed in more than 350 points of sales including the major French brands. After Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Asian markets see in Slate a way to match the Art of Calligraphy with prospective digital teaching materials.

The client needs

In a highly competitive sector, iskn illustrates the need for further R&D to be carried on to turn such innovative project into an economic success.
Indeed, digital drawing software programs have been efficiently applied for nearly 30 years.
The Leti Engineers who have brought the research to where it stands today wanted to give back the right to determine what tools are needed as appropriate to any human operators. They, for the most part, were betting on the links between physical objects and digital world.
A crowdfunding campaign has allowed the gathering of an amount significantly higher than the level of financing needed. However, moving beyond the announcement effect and great deal of interest generated, the technological leadership had to be safeguarded. By constituting a common laboratory with Carnot CEA LETI, iskn has grown from 12 patents upon their establishment in 2014 to 20 today.
This type of multi-year collaboration is essential to make it possible for the SME of 38 employees to respond favourably to increasing public and professional expectations alike, while turning to the world of interactive entertainment products and applications of business functional practices.

Partnership

As part of the CEA Tech Institute, the Grenoble-based Carnot CEA LETI has taken a pioneering role in studying and facilitating the uptake of discoveries on antiferromagnetic (AFM) and ferromagnetic fluctuations. The work of 1970 Nobel Laureate French physicist Louis Néel has been very determining in this regard. The Leti Institute is a major player in terms of dynamic R&D in the area, thanks, in particular to the Grenoble Innovation for Advanced New Technologies (GIANT) campus.
The intelligent Slate pen tablet uses a matrix of ultra-sensitive magnetometers and signal-processing algorithms carried out under the partnership and protected by 22 valid and enforceable patents.
With 50.000 “Slate” sold since the beginning, a growth in revenue by almost 300% against 2017 and the doubling of the number of employees in 2018, the long-lasting collaboration and closeness of interactions with researchers provide iskn the means to strengthen an already solid case.

March 2018