15 March 2023
A DIREC project led by researchers from the IT University and the University of Southern Denmark shows that a series of efforts have provided a wider recruitment field in the computer science studies and reduced dropout rates.
Read more (in Danish)
27 February 2023
In DIREC, we have accelerated with new projects and activities in 2022 to ensure that Denmark is at the forefront of digital research and innovation.
Read the report (in Danish)
22 February 2023
How do we create future technologies and at the same time maintain a critical approach to the many new possibilities? A workshop on speculative design challenged the PhD students to take a critical look at the downside of technology.
Speculative design is the name of a relatively new method and independent research approach, which questions the basic assumptions of technology research: that technology is good by definition, that it changes people’s lives for the better and solves the world’s problems.
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Confronting Data Co-lab is a collaboration between researchers from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen.
The goal of the interdisciplinary group is to focus sharply on the influence of data-driven technological directions our society is leaning towards – and whether it they are in line with shared societal values.
In their work, the researchers include experiences, skills and perspectives from citizens, society and industry in order to see digital technologies in a larger context.
20 February 2023
The reuse of robot data would make it much easier to improve existing or set up new robot solutions. This was the aim of the completed ReRoPro project led by Norbert Krüger, who is a Professor at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark and part of SDU Robotics.
Photo: SDU
A robot database could save time and money and would also allow for smaller-scale productions to use robots. Although it sounds simple, unfortunately, it is everything but simple.
ReRoPro was a collaborative project between the University of Southern Denmark, University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University with the companies Rockwool, Novo Nordisk, Nordbo Robotics and WellTec as partners aiming to establish a robot database. Now the first and exploratory phase of the project is over, and the researchers are applying for funding to continue their work.
Benefits of using data from previous robot solutions
The project focused on reusing robot data to improve production processes but also on finding new robot solutions in a shorter time. That is a big problem for small and medium-sized enterprises: It takes a lot of time to establish an assembly solution. You usually need to start from scratch. But if you could make efficient use of data from earlier robot solutions, new solutions could be set up faster and cheaper. The problem, however, is that these data are in the head of people. They are not digitalized. Until now.
The idea is that when you want to automate a certain task you can type in some keywords, and the information from earlier similar productions is displayed to you. Right now, there are no established structures for the reuse of data within robotics, not even within companies.
To a large degree, that is because robot data are complex. In other fields such as computer vision, big databases and neural networks are very successful, because the data are homogenous. They consist of images, for instance. But within robotics you have all sorts of different data such as images, trajectories, force vectors, information on different materials, CAD-files and so on.
Challenges
But this is only one of the challenges. You also need to make an interface that is intuitive so that it is easy to sort out the information you need from the information you do not need. Another challenge is how to reuse data for your specific task once you have the right data. There is no standardized way of organizing data.
Yet another challenge is that companies do not really want to share their robot data in a huge database to which other companies and competitors have access. It is kind of contradictory. On the one hand, the more data that is available in the database, the more powerful it would be and the more use of it companies would have. But, on the other hand, it is valuable and sensitive knowledge for the companies and obviously, companies are reluctant to make that accessible.
Possible solutions
There are different ways to go. A solution could be to develop a database structure that can be used by companies to reuse data within their own organization. Alternatively, you could make a system where the sensitive details are hidden, but where the data are still valuable for others.
In the ReRoPro project the problem has been analyzed in four use cases provided by the involved companies and by means of an international workshop with experts from industry and academia.
Next step
The involved partners have gained a much better understanding of the problem. Next step will be to apply for funding for establishing software structures that allow for the reuse of data.
20 january 2023
How do we create a Danish community of computer scientists who can develop future software for quantum technologies? This was the subject of a workshop where 40 leading researchers were recently gathered at Technical University of Denmark.
Massive investments are made in quantum technology, and major technological advances have been achieved in recent years. Although there is probably still a long way to go before an actual quantum computer will be faster than classical computers for anything other than very special calculations, digitization and computer science can already now benefit the development in many areas.
19 january 2023
Researchers from Aalborg University, together with Rambøll, have developed a tool which contributes to a better overview of CO2 emissions on the road network.
Soon, the municipalities in Denmark will get a new tool that can contribute to reach the goal of a 70 per cent reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030.
22 DECEMBER 2022
Aarhus University and the Alexandra Institute have been granted DKK 1.8 million by Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC) to investigate safe software and protocols for voting and blockchain governance. The Concordium Blockchain is the industry partner in this project.
There is constant interest for internet voting by election commissions around the world. At the same time, there is a need for such internet voting for blockchain governance. However, building such voting systems is hard: the design of cryptographic protocols and their implementation are error prone. Switzerland, which is leading in internet voting, now mandates very high standards for such protocols: it requires cryptographic proofs of security.
Only a very select group of blockchain projects already develops protocols in such a rigorous way. One of them, Concordium, has already deployed such secure cryptographic protocols. They were designed at COBRA, the Concordium Blockchain Research Center at Aarhus University. Thus, the project aims to build on this experience and advance the state of the art in high assurance cryptographic software, especially for internet voting systems and blockchain governance.
DIREC, a collaboration between the computer science departments of eight Danish universities and the Alexandra Institute, has just granted the group DKK 1.8 million for the project: Verified Voting Protocols and Blockchains. The Concordium Blockchain is the industry partner in this project.
Bas Spitters, Associate Professor at Aarhus University and lead of the Concordium Blockchain Research Center at Aarhus University (CoBRA), is leading the project. He is internationally recognized for his research in the verification of blockchain technologies and sees great potential for the project:
“All electronic voting protocols use some kind of bulletin board. Blockchains are secure bulletin boards. They are already used in minor elections to ensure that voters can check that their votes have been registered correctly. In this project, we will explore whether it can also be used in larger elections. In particular, we aim to verify that the protocols used to verify the votes are private and secure.”
Kåre Kjelstrøm, CTO at Concordium, says: “There are of course many advantages in an online election, however distrust and a lack of regulation-ready and secure solutions have prevented most countries from moving forward. From Concordium, a science-based decentralized blockchain with the identity at the protocol level, we are eager to participate and solve the potential problems in building online elections on our chain. Concordium plans to design a voting scheme to be used for decentralized governance of the blockchain. The voting scheme will allow members of the community to vote on proposed features and to elect members of the Governance Committee.”
Gert Læssøe Mikkelsen, Head of Security Lab, Alexandra Institute says: “This project provides a good opportunity for testing novel technologies in solutions for critical digital infrastructure where very high security is required. We will test and participate in the implementation of the solutions developed in the project, and we want to let more industries benefit from the experiences of working with blockchain, digital identity and high security, e.g., public utilities and the finance sector”.
Finally, the project will collaborate with another DIREC project called Trust Through Software Independence and Program Verification lead by Carsten Schürmann from ITU on the further development of tools for ensuring the quality of voting protocols and their implementation.
22 DECEMBER 2022
Christmas is coming after an extraordinary and eventful year. The digital agenda is busy and, in DIREC we have been fully engaged with placing Denmark at the forefront of digital research and innovation. We would like to thank you for a great year with many fruitful collaborations and projects.
20 DECEMBER 2022
Artificial intelligence can prevent costly production breakdowns and predict exactly when a robotic system requires service and maintenance. The technology is expected to save billions in lost production and general service costs for industrial companies.
Each year, global companies lose billions in operational disruptions and production stoppages as a result of routine maintenance of robotic systems.
15 DECEMBER 2022
Denmark has formed a new coalition government and an ambitious government framework listing a large number of proposals for reforms that must meet the major societal challenges we are facing.
We wish the 23 new ministers all the best in their new jobs and we are delighted to have a minister for digitalisation, as there will plenty to deal with during the first 100 days – and the next four years with a world in great change.
Pboto: Steen Brogaard
The aim of DIREC is to expand the capacity within research, innovation and education in digital technologies in Denmark. In addition, DIREC shall contribute to the competitiveness of Denmark through collaboration with Danish businesses and the public sector on developing new innovative products and services based on the newest digital technologies.
DIREC is partially funded by Innovation Fund Denmark.
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