"Cognitive Robotics" expands the research spectrum of the Fraunhofer AI Progress Center in the second funding phase.
As part of Cyber Valley, the AI Progress Center "Learning Systems" of the Fraunhofer IAO and the Fraunhofer IPA supports companies in exploiting the economic opportunities of AI. Feasibility studies and solutions for practical use have already been developed in 44 projects. With a total of €23 million in funding, Fraunhofer IPA's "Cognitive Robotics" center will expand its range of services from March 1, 2021.
Since November 2019, the Stuttgart-based Fraunhofer Institutes for Industrial Engineering IAO and for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA have been part of Cyber Valley, Europe's largest research cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), with the AI Progress Center "Learning Systems". The center is a central point of contact for application-oriented AI research for companies
in Baden-Württemberg. It carries out research and transfer projects for production and services. It also serves as an interface between industry and basic research within the existing Cyber Valley consortium, which includes several research institutions in the Stuttgart and Tübingen area as well as renowned industry partners. The AI Progress Center facilitates technology transfer to industry beyond the existing partners.
Broad spectrum of AI and robot technologies
Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economic Affairs of the state of Baden-Württemberg, announced the further funding of the AI Progress Centre at the virtual S-TEC summit on 25 February 2021 under the motto "AI - Made in Baden-Württemberg": "The combination of artificial intelligence and robotics opens up great opportunities for Baden-Württemberg's economy. By expanding the progress center, we are making a significant contribution to sustainably strengthening the development and successful commercialization of these key technologies in the state. Our aim is to translate the latest know-how from research into innovative products and business models even better and faster. In doing so, we also want to help our economy overcome the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic as quickly as possible and emerge stronger from the crisis."
With the second funding phase, the center will be expanded to include the topic of "Cognitive Robotics" from Fraunhofer IPA. Under the new title of AI Progress Centre "Learning Systems and Cognitive Robotics", it now also supports companies in fully exploiting the potential of service and industrial robotics and finding answers to megatrends such as demographic change, individualization, sustainability and digitalization. The focus is on technological developments from four fields of research:
- Human-machine interaction: by enabling machines to perceive, understand, imitate and actively support humans, machines become intuitive and easy to operate.
- Cyber-physical robot systems: Services are intended to help existing robot systems to be put into operation more quickly, to make them more precise and easier to program and put into operation.
- Perception and interaction: robots should be able to perform tasks autonomously with the help of AI, even in unstructured and sometimes unknown environments.
- Networked robotics: Networking serves the exchange of knowledge, mutual learning and teamwork between robots, but also between humans and robots.
Making technologies usable in companies
All of these developments help to make it easier, simpler and more economical to get started with robotics and to further develop and improve the quality of existing applications. "With cognitive robotics, we are opening up future-oriented automation solutions in production, but also in retail, the healthcare sector and agriculture," explains Dr. Werner Kraus, Head of the Robotics and Assistance Systems department at Fraunhofer IPA and Co-Head of the AI Progress Center. The institute is thus underlining its goal of becoming one of the leading institutes for cognitive robotics in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
Interested companies can now apply to the AI Advancement Center for a funded project on the topics of AI for services and production as well as cognitive robotics in order to determine the potential of the technologies for their individual use case. The application deadline is March 18, 2021.
AI in practice: 13 completed application projects
The topic of "learning systems" and direct cooperation with industrial companies as well as networking and knowledge transfer within Cyber Valley also remain part of the AI Advancement Center. Since October 2019, the Fraunhofer AI expert teams have already implemented 13 different AI applications as prototypes in exploring projects. These cover a broad spectrum of application examples for AI:
from text mining and processing for legal documents to demand forecasting for an online bookseller or the combined automation solution of quality inspection and robot-assisted packaging through to hazardous goods analysis.
The application examples show that AI offers added value for very different issues. "Not only do we use the latest machine learning technologies, but we also attach great importance to making them robust and reliable and, in particular, improving their explainability," explains Prof. Marco Huber, Head of the Center for Cyber Cognitive Intelligence at Fraunhofer IPA and Co-Head of the AI Progress Center. "This is often the basis for the technologies to be allowed to be used." Dr. Matthias Peissner, Head of the Human-Technology Interaction research department at Fraunhofer IAO and also Co-Head of the AI Progress Center, adds: "The center offers companies a protected space to test ideas for AI applications without financial risk. In this way, they learn to assess and utilize the potential of machine learning."
