Reports

On Thursday 22 April 2021, an important discussion on the present and future development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Europe, which involved key European scientists, leaders, high-level experts and the general public, took place during the “European Vision for AI 2021“ event, just a day after the European Commission published its European Approach to Artificial Intelligence. The event, organised by the VISION project consortium partners in cooperation with four networks of centres of excellence on AI (AI4Media, ELISE, TAILOR, HumanE-AI-Net), was motivated by the need to discuss with the general public how the European scientific community is currently planning to move European AI forward, to future success in a competitive environment increasingly dominated by the US and China.

Prof. Olga Štěpánková and prof. Vladimír Mařík from the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Czech Technical University (CTU - CIIRC) met with Ivan M. Havel in the autumn of 2019 to prepare a publication entitled "70 Years of Strange Science. Interviews with our cybernetics ", which includes contributions from 24 authors. The book was published by Česká technika - the CTU publishing house as a commemoration of the anniversary of the first edition of Wiener's work "Cybernetics or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" in 1948.

At the end of March, the Council for Research, Development and Innovation approved the results of the so-called scaling of all research organizations according to the Methodology 2017+. Research organizations were divided into four groups according to the quality of their selected research and development results on a national scale. Czech Technical University in Prague was assessed in a group of technical universities and received the highest rating grade

The box, which attaches to the power cord, can monitor the consumption of electro appliance and send data via the Internet of Things (IoT). This is how the intelligent probe for non-contact indication of appliance activity and energy consumption works, which is currently undergoing the last phase of field testing within the Smart Solutions for Prague project. This unique probe was developed by experts from the Department of Telecommunication Engineering. The difference from existing standard energy reading solutions is that the innovative "En-Meter M" probe does not have to be connected to the electrical circuit and can be used to monitor electricity consumption virtually anywhere and anytime.

The LEGO company, which has a large production plant in Kladno in the Czech Republic, has a long-term cooperation with the CTU Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) in the field of research and development. The development team does not work with a specific assignment, but looks for opportunities to improve and streamline production and working conditions. Successful solutions will be gradually extended to other LEGO plants around the world.

With its project Energy Self-Sufficient Prague, the team of the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University was selected in competition with other innovative teams to advance to the finals and awarded with CZK 10,000 to support the project implementation. The final of the marathon will take place at the end of June.

For more than a year, electrical engineering students have not had access to teaching laboratories due to the pandemic situation. But if they are to become quality developers, practical training is a must. Teachers from the Department of Measurement of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE) therefore use home laboratory teaching or a remote teaching laboratory in their subjects. Despite more complex conditions, interesting projects are being created even within distance practical teaching. Students are preparing, for example, a muscular activity sensor, an autonomous module for growing flowers or monitoring a chicken coop.

The Czech Championship for 20 km, the shorter of the two championship walking tracks, took place in Olomouc's Smetana Gardens on Saturday, 10 April 2021. In just three weeks, after a successful race and a 50 km championship, Vít Hlaváč, a student at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Czech Technical University, managed to win the title of Czech champion here, his first on a twenty-kilometer track of five silver medals in a row.

In the Czech Republic, more than 300,000 households still use coal for local heating. Four out of ten Czech households are then heated from the heat supply system, with 60% of the heat being produced on the basis of coal. Experts from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering suggest how to get rid of harmful emissions, how much it will cost and how to invest.

Up to 500 people a day will be vaccinated with the Covid-19 vaccine at the Děčín Vaccination Center, which has been operating in the building of the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering in the center of Děčín since Monday 12 April 2021. The faculty provided its large hall for a symbolic CZK 1 per month to the Regional Health Society, which operates the vaccination center. This was prepared for operation by a team of employees of this CTU detached workplace outside Prague.