European IT Systems Project for innovation receives 7 million investment

A team of researchers from NOVA LINCS/Department of Computer Science of NOVA School of Science and Technology, in partnership with companies and academic institutions, has received an investment of seven million euros through Horizon Europe, the European Union programme dedicated to funding research projects. The TaRDIS project will develop, accelerate and operate computer systems to promote European technological innovation.

Over the next three years, TaRDIS intends to ensure greater efficiency, speed and guarantee of accuracy in a range of situations involving complex distributed systems, i.e. computing systems divided between several computing points. Among the situations that the project intends to improve, the following stand out:

• Factory assembly lines: the complexity to define assembly lines is high, and the profit margins are very low. The TaRDIS project will optimise these processes and minimise waste and errors;
• Green energy markets: at the moment, only one company can sell renewable energy. However, it is intended that any individual producing renewable energy can start selling to someone else, on an individual basis, through the implementation of complex distributed systems.
• Technologies for Space: we increasingly rely on a complex network of satellites for communications (such as the global internet), navigation (such as GPS) or observation of our planet. The coordination of the operation of these satellites will be through a distributed model and with recourse to Artificial Intelligence.
• Personal spaces: ultimately, it aims to develop systems for the intelligent management of a private space, for example, the total control of the temperature, or the forecast of the period of arrival of an element at home - being that, in this point, private information will never be disclosed.

The TaRDIS team gathers specialists in the areas of programming languages, artificial intelligence, distributed systems, among others, thus englobing all the pillars of knowledge of the computer science area. Besides NOVA School of Science and Technology, the other academic institutions involved are Technical University Denmark, Oxford University, University of NoviSAD, and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Partnerships are required for the implementation of the solutions developed: EDP New R&D, Actyx AG, GMV Aerospace and Defense, Caixa Mágica Software, Telefónica Research and Martel Innovate are the organisations that have also associated with the project. The objective is moreover to develop a platform that allows engineers with more general training to have technical support for the development of specific programmes.