Bridges, pipelines and power grids are increasingly monitored by networks of small connected sensors, the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). Today, most of these devices depend on batteries that must be replaced and on energy-hungry cloud servers to analyse their data. Can they instead work autonomously, for years, at the place where data are collected?
This is the question behind ASIMOV – Autonomous Smart Edge IoT for Critical Infrastructure Monitoring and Vulnerability Detection, a three-year coordinated project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) through the State Research Agency (AEI), under the 2025 Knowledge Generation Projects programme.
ASIMOV brings together IREC, IMB-CNM (CSIC) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Each partner contributes one technology:
- SELDON (IREC) – brain-inspired (“neuromorphic”) analog computing hardware based on solid-oxide synaptic transistors, to run artificial intelligence directly on the device with very little energy.
- GISCARD (IMB-CNM) – energy harvesting and solid-state batteries integrated on silicon, so that each device powers itself.
- DANEEL (UOC) – ultra-low-power satellite positioning (GNSS) and AI-assisted signal processing.
The three technologies will be combined into a common platform for intelligent, energy-autonomous monitoring of critical infrastructure. For our group, SELDON builds on our work in ionotronics — using the motion of ions in oxides to compute.
ASIMOV is coordinated by Albert Tarancón (IREC); the SELDON subproject is led by Francesco Chiabrera (IREC).
Follow the project on LinkedIn for updates on research, publications and activities across the consortium.
Projects PID2025-169739OB-C31, PID2025-169739OB-C32 and PID2025-169739OB-C33, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.
