EU Commission plans to invest €1 billion annually on Research and Innovation in AI

On the 8th of May, the “Artificial Intelligence Strategic Research and Innovation Workshop” was jointly organized by euRobotics and the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) in Brussels. The two associations represent the interests of the Robotics and the Big Data stakeholders at the European level.

These two non-for-profit associations that were specifically created to provide, respectively, the Big Data and Robotics communities, with legal entities to engage in PPP contracts with the European Commission, are now joining efforts to develop a new Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Under the initiative of the EU Commission, euRobotics and BDVA are now developing the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for this new PPP on Artificial Intelligence that should start working next year. This document will aim at setting the framework to define the objectives of the new AI-PPP under Horizon Europe, outline upcoming areas of interest & ultimately leverage potential funding for future calls in the period 2021 - 2027.  

To this extent, starting from 2020, the European Commission plans to invest EUR 1 billion annually from Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe Programme, in support of Research and Innovation in AI. In this context, the term Artificial Intelligence is used in its broadest possible meaning, and so includes everything in robotics and data, as well as linking to related technical areas such as IoT, 5G, etc.

The workshop held on the 8th of May was an opportunity for the robotics and big data communities to brainstorm on the contents of the future Research and Innovation agenda of the new AI Partnership, that it is expected to be published by the end of the year.

In July, euRobotics, BDVA, EFFRA (the European Factories of the Future Association, also created as a private counterpart in the PPP on advanced manufacturing research and innovation (https://www.effra.eu/)  and the European Commission are jointly organizing a workshop on Artificial Intelligence to discuss the state of the art of research and innovation projects in AI, as well as the manufacturers’ needs and requirements and the Factories of the Future 2020 call on artificial intelligence for manufacturing which will open later this year. The participation at this workshop is free and you can register through this link: Artificial Intelligence for Manufacturing Workshop.

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BDVA (http://www.bdva.eu/) is an industry-driven international association created in 2014 to work as the private counterpart to the EU Commission to implement the Big Data Value Public-Private Partnership.

euRobotics, the European Association representing the different stakeholders of robotics in Europe (https://www.eu-robotics.net ), signed in 2013 the contract with the European Commission to start SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership in Robotics, aimed at facilitating the growth and empowerment of the robotics industry and value chain.