The 24th edition of the RNP Workshop (WRNP) will have a space for the dissemination of innovative technologies being developed by eight working groups of the organization, focusing on solutions for education, health and technology.

Started by RNP in 2002, the RD&I Program in Advanced Services aims to support the development of promising projects, so that they can create cutting-edge products and their own business model.

“We have been innovating in partnership with academia for over 20 years. The objective of the program has always been, since its inception, to hire research, development and innovation projects to develop new products to be offered to RNP's customers. Since 2019, we started to work with two project development axes, the product and the business”, details André Marins, manager of Research, Development and Innovation at RNP.

Four of the solutions that will be presented at WRNP are in the so-called phase 1 of the program, when developers work on creating a product that can be used, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). At this stage, they also start creating a business model.

This is the case, for example, of Metahealth, platform that uses virtual reality and the metaverse concept for teaching, updating and monitoring health professionals and students of these careers in hospital environments. The idea is to promote a new teaching model in a controlled environment, which can be done remotely and in an immersive way. The solution works with standard virtual reality goggles like those already on the market.

Another four solutions are in phase 2, when the tool is already mature enough to be used. The working group then becomes a startup, and the developers work on finding users while perfecting the solution.

LANSE is one of the applications that is already in this stage. Using artificial intelligence, the tool is able to predict the probability of a student failing or dropping out of their course or a specific discipline. The prediction is made by comparing behavior patterns of current students with former students. LANSE works in an integrated way with a virtual classroom environment, Moodle, and collects the necessary data in an automated way. The objective is to help managers to reduce school dropout rates.

In addition to LANSE and Metahealth, six other cutting-edge solutions will be presented on the first day of WRNP, May 22, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. Three of them are aimed at the health sector, one at the technology area itself and two at education, with edge computing solutions and university computer networks, for example. The complete list can be seen here.

WRNP 2023 will also discuss topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Open RAN, Web 3.0 and Machine Learning, among many others. Check out the full event schedule here.

The event will be held at the Royal Tulip hotel in Brasília, alongside the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (SBRC). Registration for the in person event can be done here. Those unable to attend the WRNP in person will have the opportunity to follow the free live broadcast of the event's main schedule. Just go to the WRNP website and choose the “Only Online” option.