Latest news with #TechnologyInnovationInstitute
UAE Moments
30-06-2025
- Science
- UAE Moments
AI-Powered Drones Lead a New Era in Emergency Response
The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), part of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), has introduced a major leap in autonomous drone technology. For the first time, swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can now work together without a central command. Thanks to powerful, decentralised AI developed in the UAE. Smarter, Self-Organised Drone Teams Forget traditional drone fleets that rely on fixed flight paths or manual control. TII's AI-powered drone swarms can self-organise, adapt on the fly, and make decisions together based on real-time situations. These swarms are designed to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously, whether it's assessing damage during a natural disaster, inspecting infrastructure, or tracking environmental changes. 'As part of our work at TII, we're redefining the meaning of autonomy,' said Dr. Najwa Aaraj, CEO of the Technology Innovation Institute. 'Our drones operate as a team, without needing constant instructions, and that makes them perfect for urgent, high-stakes situations.' Ideal for Crisis Response and Beyond Because of their decentralised intelligence, these drone swarms remain operational even if individual drones drop out due to harsh conditions like floods or earthquakes. That makes them an ideal solution for emergency response teams, infrastructure monitoring, agriculture, and even ecosystem protection. 'Disasters are getting more frequent and more complex,' said Professor Enrico Natalizio, Lead Researcher in Autonomous Robotics at TII. 'We need smarter, faster tools. Our drone swarms are designed to step in exactly when humans can't.' Simpler Control, Smarter Execution To ensure real-world usability, TII has developed a scalable command platform that lets operators control entire swarms through simple, high-level instructions. 'Even if there's no connectivity, the drones keep working together,' said Dr. Dario Albani, Senior Director for Autonomous Robotics at TII. 'This kind of reliability is a game-changer in urgent missions.' Real-World Rollout Underway TII is currently piloting these drone swarms and planning broader deployment with global industry partners. Their work is part of a larger government push to develop safe, ethical AI tools that benefit society. Commercial rollouts are being handled by VentureOne, ATRC's dedicated commercialization arm, targeting public safety, energy, and environmental sectors. Why It Matters This new era of autonomous drone swarms is more than just tech innovation, it's a real solution for real-world challenges. From rescuing people during floods to helping monitor critical infrastructure, these smart UAVs represent a major leap in how the world tackles emergencies and complex operations.
Zawya
23-06-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Technology Innovation Institute joins global partners to launch OpenSTX Foundation
Abu Dhabi, UAE – The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research arm of the Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), today announced its founding membership in the newly launched OpenSTX Foundation, a global initiative hosted by the Linux Foundation. The OpenSTX Foundation aims to establish a vendor-neutral, open industry standard for Synchronous Transmissions (STX), a transformative wireless protocol designed to deliver ultra-reliable, secure, and energy-efficient communications for industrial applications. The OpenSTX Foundation brings together a coalition of global academic and industry leaders to standardize next-generation STX protocols. These protocols enable multiple devices to transmit simultaneously with precise synchronization, significantly improving network reliability, reducing latency, and optimizing power usage. Such capabilities are essential for emerging applications in industrial IoT, smart cities, real-time asset tracking, and emergency response systems. The initiative holds particular promise for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, where the rapid growth of industrial and smart infrastructure projects demands resilient and scalable wireless systems. Michael Baddeley, Principal Researcher at TII and Chairperson of the OpenSTX Foundation, said: 'When launching the OpenSTX Foundation, we were looking for a platform that could support both rigorous technical collaboration and global inclusivity. The Linux Foundation gave us exactly that—a proven framework for open, vendor-neutral standards that empowers contributors across academia, startups, and global enterprises. It's the right foundation for scaling STX into an industrial-grade wireless standard.' The Foundation's steering committee brings contributors from Graz University of Technology, Imperial College London, University of Trento, SKF CNEA, RedNodeLabs, Fly4Future, and Technische Universität Darmstadt, combining deep expertise from both academia and industry. TII's involvement reinforces its mission to drive innovations and solidify Abu Dhabi's position as a global hub and center of excellence for technological development. The OpenSTX Foundation welcomes industry players, researchers, and engineers to participate in shaping the future of wireless communications. Learn more and join the movement at: ABOUT TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION INSTITUTE (TII): The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is the dedicated applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). TII is a pioneering global research and development center that focuses on applied research and new-age technology capabilities. The Institute has 10 dedicated research centers in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, AI and digital science, directed energy, quantum, secure systems, propulsion and space, biotechnology, and renewable and sustainable energy. By working with exceptional talent, universities, research institutions, and industry partners from all over the world, TII connects an intellectual community and contributes to building an R&D ecosystem that reinforces the status of Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a global hub for innovation. For more information, visit PRESS CONTACTS: Jinan Warrayat – tii@
Mid East Info
11-06-2025
- Business
- Mid East Info
Technology Innovation Institute Announces Falcon-H1 model availability as NVIDIA NIM to Deliver Sovereign AI at Scale
Flagship, top ranking, open-source AI model to be production-ready via new NVIDIA NIM microservices that deliver enterprise-ready inference for thousands of LLMs Paris, France – Abu Dhabi, UAE – June 2025: Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global research center and the developer behind the globally ranked Falcon open-source AI models and privacy-preserving technologies, today announced that Falcon-H1, its next-generation, hybrid-architecture large language model, will be available as an NVIDIA NIM microservice. The announcement, timed with NVIDIA's GTC Paris showcase, positions Falcon-H1 for seamless enterprise deployment across cloud, on-premise, or hybrid environments. Developers can soon access and scale Falcon-H1 with production-grade performance, without the engineering overhead typically required to adapt open-source models for real-world application. Dr. Najwa Aaraj, CEO of TII, commented: 'Falcon-H1's availability on NVIDIA NIM reflects our ongoing leadership in shaping the future of open, sovereign, and cross-domain deployment ready AI. It demonstrates that breakthrough innovation from our region is not only competitive on the global stage – it's setting new benchmarks for scalable, secure, and enterprise-ready AI.' At the heart of Falcon-H1 is a novel hybrid Transformer–Mamba architecture, combining the efficiency of state space models (SSMs) with the expressiveness of Transformer networks. Designed in-house by TII researchers, the architecture supports context windows of up to 256k tokens, an order-of-magnitude leap in long-context reasoning, while preserving high-speed inference and reduced memory demands. Multilingual by design, Falcon-H1 delivers robust performance ahead of models in its category, across both high- and low-resource languages, making it suited for global-scale applications. Supported soon for deployment via the universal LLM NIM microservice, Falcon-H1 becomes a plug-and-play asset for enterprises building agentic systems, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows, or domain-specific assistants. Whether running with NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, or SGLang, NIM abstracts away the underlying inference stack, enabling developers to deploy Falcon-H1 in minutes using standard tools such as Docker and Hugging Face, with automated hardware optimization and enterprise-grade SLAs. 'Falcon-H1's availability on NVIDIA NIM bridges the gap between cutting-edge model design and real-world operability. It combines our hybrid architecture with the performance and reliability of NVIDIA microservices. Developers can integrate Falcon-H1 optimized for long-context reasoning, multilingual versatility, and real-world applications. What once required weeks of infrastructure tuning becomes achievable in minutes at scale, with multilingual depth, and production resilience', said Dr. Hakim Hacid, Chief AI Researcher at TII. The release also mark Falcon-H1's integration with NVIDIA NeMo microservices and NVIDIA AI Blueprints, giving developers access to full lifecycle tooling, from data curation and guardrailing to continuous evaluation and post-deployment tuning. Crucially, this makes Falcon-H1 viable in regulated, latency-sensitive and sovereign AI contexts, with full-stack NVIDIA support. With over 55 million downloads to date, the Falcon series has become one of the most widely adopted open-source models from the Middle East region. Beyond its scale, Falcon-H1 smaller variants routinely outperform larger peers on reasoning and mathematical tasks, while the 34B model now leads several industry benchmarks. TII's strategic alignment with NVIDIA's validated deployment framework reflects that open-source models are production-ready assets. Falcon-H1's availability on NIM cements its place among them as a sovereign, scalable, and secure alternative to closed-weight incumbents. About the Technology Innovation Institute: The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is the dedicated applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). TII is a pioneering global research and development center that focuses on applied research and new-age technology capabilities. The Institute has 10 dedicated research centers in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, AI and digital science, directed energy, quantum, secure systems, propulsion and space, biotechnology, and renewable and sustainable energy. By working with exceptional talent, universities, research institutions, and industry partners from all over the world, TII connects an intellectual community and contributes to building an R&D ecosystem that reinforces the status of Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a global hub for innovation.
Zawya
27-05-2025
- Science
- Zawya
The Technology Innovation Institute develops new drone technology to detect hidden water leaks from the sky
Abu Dhabi, UAE - The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global scientific research center and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), has introduced a new application of its advanced drone-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). This radar system uses high-frequency radio waves to create detailed, high-resolution images of the ground, to detect underground water leaks in urban and remote areas without excavation and ground removal. The announcement was made at the World Utilities Congress (WUC) 2025, underscoring the event's role in spotlighting innovative solutions for infrastructure and water security. Building on its multi-frequency imaging capabilities, this new application of TII's SAR system leverages P-, L-, and C radar signals– each one selected for its distinct advantages. P-band enables deeper subsurface penetration, L-band detects subtle fluctuations in soil moisture, and C-band provides high-resolution imaging of surface changes. Combined, these signals support the detection of anomalies and disturbances that may indicate underground water leaks, enhancing early intervention efforts in both urban and natural environments. Previously validated for archaeological and infrastructure use, the system is now optimized for sandy environments to detect leaks at depths of up to 40 meters, enabling utilities to identify and mitigate water losses from underground pipelines. This approach introduces a more efficient and sustainable way to monitor infrastructure conditions. Dr. Najwa Aaraj, CEO of TII, said: 'This latest application of our SAR platform reinforces its versatility in tackling real-world challenges. By enabling non-invasive detection of water leaks, we'll be able to equip utility providers with intelligence that allows early detection of water leaks, helping to conserve one of the world's most vital resources.' By identifying leaks early and accurately without the need for excavation, utilities can significantly reduce water loss, lower maintenance costs, and avoid expensive infrastructure damage. This proactive approach not only extends the lifespan of pipeline networks but also supports more efficient resource management, delivering long-term savings for governments, municipalities, and utility providers alike. Dr. Felix Vega, Chief Researcher, Directed Energy Research Center (DERC), said: 'SAR's effectiveness depends on how well we can extract signal from noise, especially in complex environments like sandy terrains. Our latest work focused on enhancing backscatter analysis and coherence metrics to improve subsurface anomaly detection. This has allowed us to push the limits of airborne radar performance in ways that weren't possible even a year ago.' Compared to conventional sensors, TII's SAR solution provides broader coverage, higher resolution, and consistent performance across various terrains and weather conditions. With its scalable architecture and modular drone integration, the platform is suitable for use by urban utilities, desert infrastructure operators, and sectors such as agriculture and disaster response. As the UAE strengthens its national water security strategy, this technology arrives at an important time. By reducing water losses due to leakages, the SAR platform contributes to operational efficiency and supports climate resilience and sustainable resource management, which are goals aligned with the UAE's Net Zero 2050 commitments. ABOUT TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION INSTITUTE (TII): The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is the dedicated applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). TII is a pioneering global research and development center that focuses on applied research and new-age technology capabilities. The Institute has 10 dedicated research centers in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, AI and digital science, directed energy, quantum, secure systems, propulsion and space, biotechnology, and renewable and sustainable energy. By working with exceptional talent, universities, research institutions, and industry partners from all over the world, TII connects an intellectual community and contributes to building an R&D ecosystem that reinforces the status of Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a global hub for innovation. For more information, visit
CairoScene
24-05-2025
- Business
- CairoScene
Region's Most Advanced AI Language Model Launches in UAE
Falcon Arabic is expected to enhance natural language processing applications across sectors, empowering Arabic speakers worldwide. May 24, 2025 The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi has officially launched a cutting-edge large language model designed specifically for the Arabic language—Falcon Arabic. Building on the success of the original Falcon AI model introduced in 2023, Falcon Arabic is the first of its kind developed within the region and outperforms all other Arabic language models currently available. The development addresses longstanding concerns about Arabic's role in the rapidly evolving global AI landscape, ensuring the language keeps pace with technological innovation. Falcon Arabic is expected to enhance natural language processing applications across sectors—from education and government to business and media—empowering Arabic speakers worldwide with more accurate, nuanced AI tools. As AI continues to transform economies and societies, Falcon Arabic represents a strategic investment in linguistic diversity and technological sovereignty—ensuring that Arabic remains a vibrant and integral part of the AI future.
