Digital Innovation Hubs
Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence
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Contact Data
Coordinator
University of Amsterdam (UVA)
Year Established
2017
Location
Science Park 904, Amsterdam, 1098 XH, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Website
Social Media
Contact information
Contact information
Description
Description
ICAI is the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) is a national initiative focused on joint technology development between academia, industry and government in the area of artificial intelligence. The Netherlands has the talent, the world-class research and the longstanding tradition in AI education to be one of the world’s top ranked countries in terms of innovation power. ICAI brings these positive forces together in a unique national initiative.
ICAI’s innovation strategy is organized around industry labs, these are multi-year strategic collaborations with a focus on technology and talent development. ICAI will create innovative AI-applications, distribute AI-knowledge for companies and organizations in the form of technology products and tools, train corporate employees through dedicated courses, and simultaneously maintain a connection with other world-level science centers. ICAI will also facilitate commercialization by enhancing start-up and spin-outs.
ICAI is an open national network of academic, industrial and governmental partners that is based at Amsterdam Science Park. ICAI has a growing number of partners: Technical University Delft, University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ahold Delhaize, Bosch, National Police, Qualcomm and Elsevier. So far five research labs have been founded: QUVA Lab, Delta Lab, AirLab Amsterdam, AIRLab Delft, Elsevier AI Lab, Police AI Lab, with more to come.
ICAI has a physical presence in the Amsterdam region, specifically at Amsterdam Science Park 904.
ICAI is a non-profit organization, part of the University of Amsterdam, and aimed at knowledge and talent development. ICAI helps to disseminate state-of-the-art know-how in artificial intelligence as part of the Amsterdam Data Science meetup, with close to 5000 members. It connects master students to startups and SMEs, both for temporary assignments and for full time employment.
ICAI helps tech companies (such as Qualcomm and Bosch) and companies in the service industry (such as Ahold Delhaize (retail) and Elsevier (information)) and governmental organizations (Nationale Politie) with digitilization through knowledge development and talent development.
In 2019, ICAI will use the way of working previously established in the national COMMIT program (http://commit-nl.nl) to transfer high science to SMEs. In this setup, relatively small projects are run, jointly with academic participants and SMEs on well-defined tasks defined by the SME(s). Past examples include sentiment analysis on social media data and privacy-aware mobile recommender systems for mobile systems.
Link to national or regional initiatives for digitising industry
ICAI has been one of the drivers behind AINED, a first step towards the development of a national AI strategy for the Netherlands.
The ICAI initiative is directly linked to the Nationale DigitaliseringsStrategie and the Digitale Week, which is planned for the week of 18-21 March 2019. (https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2018/06/01/nederlandse-digitaliseringsstrategie)
Market and Services
Sectors
- Wholesale and retail
- Public administration
- Life sciences & healthcare
TRL Focus
- TRL1 - Basic principles observed and reported
- TRL2 - Technology concept and/or application formulated
- TRL3 - Analytical and experimental critical function and/or characteristic proof of concept
- TRL4 - Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment
- TRL5 - Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment
- TRL6 - System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment
- TRL7 - System prototype demonstration in an operational environment
Services provided
- Collaborative Researchs
Service Examples
Multi-modal summarization
a. Client profile: governemental organization tasked with public safety and security
b. Client needs: intelligent and transparent tools for summarizing large streams of heterogeneous information (text, audio, image, video)
c. Solution provided: algorithms for summarizing combined textual and image data, tested on public and proprietary datasets.
Talent development
ICAI attracts, trains and retains AI talent at the PhD level. The impact we target is to develop more AI R&D in the Netherlands.
The ambition is to create 100 new PhD positions using industrial funding.
The clients are industrial and governmental stakeholders in the Netherlands, who need AI experts.
More details: http://icai.ai
Computer vision technology development
a. Client profile: Technology organization
b. Client needs: low energy neural network algorithms able to perform effective image analysis at minimal power consumption
c. Solution provided: Algorithms developed and tested on public and propreitary data
AI awareness
ICAI contributes to the larger societal debates about AI, complementing the technology focus of the center with attention to socio-economic factors and ethical/legal frameworks.
ICAI organizes lecture series, meetups, and contributes to a national AI course aimed at explaining AI to a very broad audience through an open course, targeting 1% of the Dutch population.
The client is Dutch society, where a comprehensive picture of AI, its potential and risks needs to be communicated.
The course went live on December 21, 2018 at http://ai-cursus.nl
More details: http://icai.aiTechnology development
ICAI is centered around the concept of industry labs, in which knowledge institutes and industry partners jointly develop new AI technology.
The focus in the early stages of ICAI's existence is on large industry and/or governmental organizations, with a capactiy to absorb new AI knowledge and with suitable data infrastructure.
The client needs addressed are high-tech knowledge needs.
More details: http://icai.aiDataset search development
a. Client profile: information broker for news and scientific information
b. Client needs: develop methods for identifying and recommending relevant datasets in scientific literature
c. Solution provided: algorithms developed and tested on public and proprietary datasets
Organization
Organizational form
(part of) Public organization (part of RTO, or university)
Turnover
1.000.000-5.000.000
Number of employees
1-9
Evolutionary Stage
Fully operational
Geographical Scope
National
Funding
- National specific innovation funding
- Private funding
- Partner resources
Customers
Number of customers annually
6-10
Type of customers
- MidCaps (between €2-10 billion turnover)
- Large companies, multi-nationals
Partners
Bosch
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Partner Type
University
Website
Universiteit Utrecht
Partner Type
University
Website
Ahold Delhaize
Partner Type
Large enterprise
Website
Qualcomm Technologies Netherlands
Partner Type
Large enterprise
Website
Elsevier
Partner Type
Large enterprise
Website
Nationale Politie
Partner Type
Other
Website
Technologies
- Robotics
- Artificial intelligence
H2020 Projects
-
ROSIN
ROS-Industrial quality-assured robot software componentsROS-Industrial quality-assured robot software components
ROSIN will create a step change in the availability of high-quality intelligent robot software components for the European
industry. This is achieved by building on the existing open-source “Robot Operating System” (ROS) framework and
leveraging its worldwide community. ROS and its subsidiary ROS-Industrial (European side led by TU Delft and
Fraunhofer) is well-known, but its European industrial potential is underestimated. The two main critiques are (1) is the
quality on par with industry, and (2) is there enough European industrial interest to justify investing in it? Partially, the
answer is “yes and yes”; ample industrial installations are already operational. Partially however, the two questions hold
each other in deadlock, because further quality improvement requires industrial investment and vice versa. ROSIN will
resolve the deadlock and put Europe in a leading position.
For software quality, ROSIN introduces a breakthrough innovation in automated code quality testing led by IT University
Copenhagen, complemented with a full palette of quality assurance measures including novel model-in-the-loop continuous
integration testing with ABB robots. Simultaneously, more ROS-Industrial tools and components will be created by making
50% of the ROSIN budget available to collaborating European industrial users and developers for so-called Focused
Technical Projects. ROSIN maximizes budget efficacy by alleviating yet another deadlock; experience shows that industry
will fund ROS-Industrial developments, but only after successful delivery. ROSIN provides pre-financing for developers
which will be recovered into a future revolving fund to perpetuate the mechanism.
Together with broad education activities (open for any EU party) led by Fachhochshule Aachen and community-building
activities led by Fraunhofer, ROSIN will let ROS-Industrial reach critical mass with further self-propelled growth resulting
in a widely adopted, high-quality, open-source industrial standard. -
TETRAMAX
TEchnology TRAnsfer via Multinational Application eXperimentsTEchnology TRAnsfer via Multinational Application eXperiments
The major objective of TETRAMAX is to provide an implementation of the European “Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)” initiative in the domain of customized low energy computing (CLEC) for CPS and the IoT. The project builds on three major activity lines: (1) Stimulating, organizing, co-funding, and evaluating different types of cross-border Application Experiments, providing “EU added value” via innovative CLEC technologies to first-time users and broad markets in European ICT-related industries, (2) Building and leveraging a new European CLEC competence center network, offering technology brokerage, one-stop shop assistance and CLEC training to SMEs and mid-caps, and with a clear evolution path towards new regional digital innovation hubs where needed, and (3) Paving the way towards self-sustainability based on pragmatic and customized long-term business plans. The project impact will be measured based on well-defined, goal-oriented performance indicators. The immediate ambition of TETRAMAX within its duration is to support 50+ industry clients and 3rd parties in the entire EU with innovative technologies, leading to an estimated revenue increase of 25 Mio. € based on 50+ new or improved CLEC-based products, 10+ entirely new businesses/SMEs initiated, as well as 30+ new permanent jobs and significant cost and energy savings in product manufacturing. Moreover, in the long term, TETRAMAX will be the trailblazer towards a reinforced, profitable, and sustainable ecosystem infrastructure, providing CLEC competence, services and a continuous innovation stream at European scale, yet with strong regional presence as preferred by SMEs. -
RobotUnion
Stimulate ScaleUps to develop novel and challenging TEchnology and systems applicable to new Markets for ROBOtic soLUTIONsStimulate ScaleUps to develop novel and challenging TEchnology and systems applicable to new Markets for ROBOtic soLUTIONs
RobotUnion will discover, support and fund 20 European Superstar Scaleups confirmed by top VC investors and global corporates of 4 new market domains for robotics: manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and civil infrastructure.
40 companies developing research will be selected out of a pan-European deal flow of 300 Scaleups through 2 Open Calls. The top 20 will join an acceleration program that will help them progress from TRL4 to TRL7 onwards. This 2 up to 16-months program will provide them with technical and non-technical support services:
• Ph-D in residence type of service (the so-called Technical Mentors and Researchers-in-Residence will provide access to knowledge in abilities such as configurability, adaptability, motion, manipulation, decisional autonomy, dependability, interaction, perception, and cognitive ability)
• Entrepreneur-in-residence type of support (provided by a pool of world-class training and high-level business mentoring complemented by fundraising mentors)
• A voucher scheme to provide access to facilities and technical services across Europe
• Up to €200K of free-equity funding for the best-in-class companies.
8 best-in-class companies will start a fundraising campaign led by the VCs and platforms in the consortium leveraging the €8M of public funding with additional €8M of private investment.
To this end RobotUnion counts on 5 premier-class RTOs specialized in Robotics at European Level to provide technical support; 4 corporates enabling access to new markets: MADE in Manufacturing, ARLA food in Agri-food, FENIN in Healthcare and FERROVIAL in Infrastructure; CHRYSALIX and ODENSE S&V, as VCs of references in robotics, to lead the fundraising campaigns.
Business support partners are FMWC (dissemination), FBA (open call management), ISDI (business acceleration) and BLM (fundraising and access to corporates).
RobotUnion will help demonstrate how Europe can lead disruption around Robotics and turn the EU into the EU of entrepreneurial states
-
agROBOfood
agROBOfood: Business-Oriented Support to the European Robotics and Agri-food Sector, towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in RoboticsagROBOfood: Business-Oriented Support to the European Robotics and Agri-food Sector, towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in Robotics
agROBOfood is dedicated to accelerate the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector through the adoption of robotic technologies. It will consolidate, extend and strengthen the current ecosystem by establishing a sustainable network of DIHs. This will boost the uptake of robotic solutions by the agri-food sector: a huge challenge requiring an inclusive approach involving all relevant European players. The agROBOfood consortium has 39 partners, led by Wageningen University & Research and other core partners of previous key projects such as IoF2020, ROBOTT-NET, PicknPack and I4MS, to leverage the ecosystem that was established in those projects. The heart of the project is formed by Innovation Experiments (IEs), organized and monitored by the DIHs. In each of the 7 Regional Clusters, an initial IE will demonstrate the robotics innovations in agri-food in a manner that ensures replicability across Europe, wide adoption and sustainability of the DIHs network. agROBOfood will work in lockstep with the European robotics community, ensuring synergetic effects with initiatives such as EU-Robotics. This will maximize the return of European, including private capital, investments in the digital transformation of agri-food. A key instrument to achieve this objective is the Industrial Advisory Board. They will provide strategic guidance and also define priorities for the selection of solutions to be funded. Open Calls of 8MEUR will attract additional Innovation Experiments (12) and Industrial Challenges (8). These will expand the network and ensure that vast technological developments and emerging challenges of the agri-food sector are incorporated in the service portfolio of DIHs. Through its inclusive structure and ambitious targets, agROBOfood aims to bring the entire European ecosystem together; connecting the dots in a way that ensures effective adoption of robotics technologies in the European agri-food sector. -
SMART4ALL
SELFSUSTAINED CROSS BORDER CUSTOMIZED CYBERPHYSICAL SYSTEM EXPERIMENTS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AMONG EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERSSELFSUSTAINED CROSS BORDER CUSTOMIZED CYBERPHYSICAL SYSTEM EXPERIMENTS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AMONG EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERS
SMART4ALL builds capacity amongst European stakeholders via the development of selfsustained, cross-border experiments that transfer knowledge and technology between academia and industry. It targets CLEC CPS and the IoT and combines a set of unique characteristics that join together under a common vision different cultures, different policies, different geographical areas and different application domains. SMART4ALL brings a new paradigm for revealing “hidden innovation treasures” from SEE and helping them to find the path to market via new, innovative commercial products. As part of its strategy, the project will develop and maintain an active network of DIHs across SEE for supporting academics, start-ups, SMEs, and mid-caps entering the digitization era. The mechanisms for achieving this are the design and implementation of 88 cross-border PAEs that will be executed by the consortium members and by 3rd party consortia (academics, companies and mid-caps). The latter will be supported via well-defined regular open calls and will have a day-by-day coaching by SMART4ALL consortium for boosting the research ideas to successful products. PAEs will be actively supported by SMART4ALL DIH cluster throughout and after their execution. The targeted application areas are domains that are not adequately represented in current SAE projects and include digitized environment, digitized agriculture, digitized anything and digitized transport. SMART4ALL introduces also the concept of marketplace-as-a-service (MaaS) that acts as one-stop-smart-stop of SMART4ALL DIH cluster for offering tools, services, platforms based mainly on open sources technologies as well as technology suppliers-adopter matchmaking capabilities customized to the four thematic pillars of the project. Finally, SMART4ALL plans horizontal activities that will support the Digital Skills Agenda of EC and the support of sensitive social groups via ideas and products that have significant impact on their lives.