With total funding of EUR 23 million offered by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Housing for the state of Baden-Württemberg, the “Cognitive Robotics” center at Fraunhofer IPA expands the organization’s service portfolio in this area since 01 March 2021.
 
Having started in November 2019, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA are part of Cyber Valley, the largest research cooperation network in Europe for Artificial Intelligence (AI), with the AI Innovation Center “Learning Systems”. For companies in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the center is the main point of contact for application-oriented AI research, implementing research and transfer projects for production and services. So far, 13 AI applications in the form of prototypes have been developed.
 
In the second funding phase, the center includes Fraunhofer IPA services in the area of “Cognitive Robotics”. Rebranded as the AI Innovation Center “Learning Systems and Cognitive Robotics”, the facility now also supports companies to fully exploit the potential of service and industry robotics in addition to finding answers to megatrends such as demographic change, individual, sustainability and digitalization. The center focuses on technological developments from four key research areas: human-machine interaction, cyber-physical robot systems, perception and interaction as well as networked robotics. Furthermore, a total of ten studies developed at the AI Innovation Center will gradually be made available on the website free of charge. 
 
The AI Innovation Center implements the European AI strategy. In this context, trustworthy AI is the key requirement for the use of these technologies. The unification of AI and cognitive robotics under the umbrella of the AI Innovation Center can be seen as a prototype of the AI, data and robotics partnership for the next framework program Horizon Europe. The Strategic Research, Innovation and Deployment Agenda (SRIDA) defined by networks and associations like BDVA, euRobotics, ELLIS, EurAI and CLAIRE includes contributions from the AI Innovation Center. Moreover, Fraunhofer is engaged in the project ELISE and the center is a partner institute of the MIAI in Grenoble as a result of the German-French Roadmap for a Research and Innovation Network on Artificial Intelligence. Finally, the center is active within the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI).

Contact: Dr Werner Kraus, Head of the Department “Robot and Assistive Systems” at Fraunhofer IPA and Co-Leader of the “AI Innovation Center; werner.kraus@ipa.fraunhofer.de; +49 711 970 1049. 

Fraunhofer IPA - Center for Cognitive Robotics

Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA