From derelict food market to futuristic Centre of Excellence: inside a Cyprus success story

It's an institute that values both scientific research but also art and culture. If we have an image, we send it to an AI, we ask it to recreate it. Will it create the exact same image? We go beyond the basic academic research and try to connect with industry and help develop the ecosystem of research innovation. This can be used in any kind of occupation, activities, rehabilitation. Formerly this space was an obsolete food market, today it is a dynamic regional center dedicated to immersive technologies, a metamorphosis in constant evolution made in Europe. In the capital of Cyprus is a center of excellence specialized in interactive media, intelligent systems and emerging technologies. It is partially financed by the European Union, it has 110 employees, mostly researchers, developers and technicians, integrated in multidisciplinary research groups, emerging companies and affiliated derivative companies. They work on more than 50 research projects, mainly European, but also local, national and industry-funded. This team uses artificial intelligence and augmented and virtual reality technologies to create interactive urban maps with real-time data on traffic, noise, environment or pollution, reproductions of historical monuments whose access is restricted. Virtual reality is one of those technologies that can enable different modes of interaction with visual elements. So one of the things that can enable you is to be immersed in an environment that maybe it's difficult for you to go, either because that's in a different country or maybe you have mobility issues. Being immersed in that environment allows you to feel like, yes, I'm there. The same team also develops innovative technologies that allow interactive experiences. This, for example, will allow children to create their own stages with avatars and actors in a theater museum. You can basically give the actors in the scene different emotional temperaments, different actions that they can do, and effectively create your own play. There's also the stage designer table where functionally you place the different objects in the space, you tell the actors where they need to go, you put spotlights where they need to be, and then I can also change the actions that they're currently doing. So at the moment for example, we've made him talk, so now that I've removed it from the screen he will no longer speak. This other company, Derivada, uses sensors to analyze the interaction between body and muscle movements. This could allow physiotherapists to propose better treatments for their patients. We have developed our own hardware in order to replace the commercially available systems with something which is cheaper, easy to install and fast, so can be easy for consumers to use this either at home or at their jobs in order to enhance performance and for rehabilitation reasons as well. Technology also developed here already helps athletes to improve their performance by measuring in real time of cadences, contact with the ground, heart rate and other parameters. The main applications of the technology is for the athlete to have a real-time feedback when they are running indoors or outdoors without having a coach with them or to analyze the data afterwards alone or with a coach or with a clinician. The center was founded with the aim of becoming a regional pole of technology and knowledge transfer. According to its executive director, it is a key tool to combat brain flight in Cyprus, a small member state of the European Union with highly qualified engineers, researchers and students. Cyprus is a small place. We cannot really compete with heavy industry or anything else. I believe the only way to help the economy and move a little bit beyond tourism, which was the main economic driving force all these years, is to keep this critical mass of talent and build it and expand it in order to create an economic activity which relates to technology. This researcher, for example, works to help farmers to increase their yields through virtual reality applications based on artificial intelligence. Farmers were really open to the idea of using AI, XR, robots, but they didn't know such technology was available to them. Other researchers are developing solutions to help cities to map, identify, quantify, protect and manage better their trees and urban green spaces. We wanted to provide more time to the municipal staff For creative work it's easier for them to know where they need to go and trim the trees geographically, where they should plant trees and also because we combine this platform with other projects that relate to the urban heat island effect, so the rising of temperatures, now the municipality will be able to deduct the temperatures in the city. The city of Nicosia already uses some of these solutions. The municipality was a founding partner of the center. The mayor himself presides over its Board of Directors. We are between Europe, Asia and Africa and this is very attractive to come. The presence of science in Nicosia brings together top-class academics, top-class research in order to create research that will be used. ...in the sphere of innovation, but also to create applicable solutions. Soluciones ya utilizadas por servicios municipales como esta plataforma que ayuda a localizar y notificar vertederos ilegales incluso diminutos por toda la ciudad. This area is 50 square kilometers and we have identified through our technology 98 incidents. Each color indicates a different type of waste. You can also see a hotspot where most of the waste is located. The center also claims to be a pole of attraction for artistic creation. In a recent exhibition, for example, this artist made visible the invisible mobile data. While this duo reflected on the creative visual power of artificial intelligence, asking it to generate its own images without human intervention. We all have the feeling that AI images have this own aesthetic quality to them. What happens if these machines only interact with themselves and there's no more human input. And we can see here it's very mundane pictures of nature, advertising and competition. The last festival co-organized by the center gathered the proposals of 60 artists from 15 countries.