Read the interview with Dr. Carlos Peña-Monferrer and Dr. Carmen Díaz-Marín and their winning proposal: SITE – Simulations for Immersive Telepresence Enhancement
Dr. Carlos Peña-Monferrer, Dr. Carmen Díaz-Marín and SIMULATION ZERO, S.L.
SimZero is a deeptech startup integrating advanced scientific simulations into Industry 4.0/5.0 and Smart Cities through our AI-driven infrastructure. Their API delivers results in just milliseconds, seamlessly managing tasks such as inference, in-situ post-processing, and handling scalable requests within a single product. This enables users to easily integrate predictive real-time insights on fluid dynamics, particles, or chemical reactions into platforms like microcontrollers, web apps, or VR. Founded by Dr. Carlos Peña-Monferrer and Dr. Carmen Díaz-Marín, SimZero helps companies reshape urban planning, industry efficiency, and infrastructure resilience, fostering smarter, more sustainable cities and industries.
Can you give a brief overview of your winning proposal?
What are its key objectives and innovative aspects?
SITE pioneers the integration of AI-driven scientific computational methods within an immersive telepresence platform. It enhances remote interactions by reproducing high-resolution, volumetric scientific data and capturing key variables such as velocity, pressure, temperature, or contaminant concentrations in fluids like water and air, or smoke. This enables accurate, physics-based representations of real-world environments, allowing users to predict, test, and interact with virtual scenarios as if they were physically present.
Our primary goal is to validate these capabilities through a series of benchmarks, measuring how predictions and communications of fluid flow features perform within the immersive environment platform. We will also showcase an autonomous mobile robot whose path planning will be optimised based on real-time fluid flow predictions transmitted simultaneously to operators. Ultimately, SITE serves as a gateway for integrating scientific simulations, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), into immersive telepresence, ensuring compatibility with stakeholders’ models for seamless collaboration and broader industry applications.
What motivated you to apply for the SPIRIT Open Call?
We saw participating in the SPIRIT Open Call as a unique and timely opportunity to enhance telepresence immersiveness and capabilities. We’ve envisioned this project for some time, and SPIRIT provided the ideal platform and infrastructure to bring it to life. The resources and support offered through this initiative give us easy access to telepresence infrastructure and help materialise the project. For instance, 5G networks, edge-cloud infrastructures, and platform components are readily available for us to use in the SPIRIT testbeds. The Open Call also provides an opportunity to shape the future of immersive telepresence applications and collaborate with Europe’s top innovative companies and universities that are part of the consortium.
How do you envision this project making an impact?
SITE brings a transformative perspective to the future of telepresence by integrating an additional layer of data that mirrors real-world conditions and predicts future events. It enhances telepresence by simulating environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and airflow in real time, making it seem as if participants are physically on site. By fusing simulated with real-world data, SITE provides a more comprehensive and accurate representation of the environment. For example, it can replicate environmental effects on avatars or surfaces, enabling realistic applications such as thermal comfort assessments or remote surgical training in an operating room-like setting.
The ability to simulate physical phenomena is invaluable for smart factories as well as high-stakes applications, including evacuations, rescue missions, inspections, and robot or drone path-planning. It ultimately improves decision-making, safety, and operational efficiency by enabling companies to respond faster, reduce operational risks, and optimise resource allocation in real-time scenarios.