Buildings
Athena Research and Innovation Center has premises and infrastructures in Athens, Patras and Xanthi. The genaral administration of Athena RIC is located in Athens. The Center's institutes and units have dispersed activity in three geographical regions of Greece: the Institute of Industrial Systems (ISIS) is located in Patras (the third largest city in Greece), the Institute of Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) and Corallia have premises both in Athens and in Xanthi, and the Environmental and Networking Technologies and Applications (ENTA) Unit is accomodated in Xanthi.
All buildings include state of the art facilities and resources to support researchers: telecommunications systems, pc laboratories, library, intranet and structured cabling, multiple servers, wireless network infrastructures, laboratories, infrastructures for the digitazation and support of 3D applications developments, infrastructures for multimedia production and studio for sound proccessing.
Labs
A selection of the Center's technical infrastructures are listed below. The complete list will be available soon.
The HUBIC Lab : Incubator of leading-edge research
The HUBIC Lab is designed to facilitate leading-edge research and experimentation in multimodal interaction, spanning from Human-Computer Interaction to human social behavior. HUBIC provides researchers with state-of-the-art device and infrastructure for capturing, analyzing and modelling the multimodal signals pertaining to human behavior: face and body motion, eye-tracking, Kinect sensors, high definition audio and video capturing equipment, robotic and virtual character platforms, biosensors (EEG) and more.
Archaeometry and physicochemical measurements Lab
A fully equipped Thermoluminescence (TL) and Optically Stimulated Luminescence laboratory with state-of-the-art measuring systems, an autonomous, closed x-ray radiography system and a portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) system, a stereoscope equipped with the necessary hardware and software for digital imaging, image analysis and surface analysis, a fully equipped laboratory for sample preparation and pre-processing involving new-technology laboratory ovens, furnaces and microwave sample digestion systems.
The Laboratory has the capability to provide specialized services (dating, stoichiometric chemical analyses, radiographic and multi-spectral object imaging, in-situ stoichiometric analyses with radiometric methods, etc) to the scientific community and various production sectors of the Economy, both Greek and international (universities, technology institutes, archaeological agencies, local authorities, enterprises, industry, individuals etc). All laboratory procedures follow the GLP and ISO protocols in order to assure high quality services and absolutely reliable results.
Sound and video recording and editing studio
The studio offers facilities for audio and video production and supports numerous research projects and experiments.
Digitazation Center of Cultural Heritage
Clepsydra - Centre for the Digitalisation of Cultural Heritage was founded at the end of 2006 as a result of a homonym project that was financed by the operational program 'Information Society' of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Clepsydra is accommodated in the current installations of the Cultural and Educational Technology Institute (C.E.T.I.), of the Research Centre 'Athena', in the city of Xanthi.
It is focused on the digitisation, preservation, management, promotion and dissemination of our cultural heritage. It is specialised on digitising and recording artefacts from different time periods. Its infrastructure can fullfill the 2D and 3D digitization needs of Greece and of all neighbour countries. The skilled personnel can run digitization projects from the initial stages of planning up to the implementation and completion stages.
Multimedia Processing and Production
Computing facilities and digital equipment that includes a complete photographic studio, various 2D/3D projection units, video and sound editing systems, advanced, high fidelity and heavy duty copying and imaging systems (high resolution scanners, specialized film and slide scanners, book scanner etc.), as well as high resolution 3D scanners, 3D cameras, multi-spectral cameras, etc. ILSP's department in Multimedia has a long experience in R&D projects targeting innovative ICTs and especially multimedia solutions for educational and cultural applications. These projects involved multimedia applications, multimedia databases, multimedia processing, multimedia indexing, metadata and content-based retrieval. Research focuses on the development of methods and tools for 3D representations of actual and virtual worlds, 3D representation of multi-dimensional data, content-based analysis and organization of multimedia collections, human-computer interactions, intelligent user interfaces and ambient intelligence.