Researcher of SZTAKI and EPIC Center of Excellence spoke on the Netzwerk Digital Artificial Intelligence Conference

As part of the Netzwerk Digital collaboration, the Advantage Austria, the Artificial Intelligence Coalition, the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hungary and the Swisscham Hungary presented their joint Artificial Intelligence Conference, focusing on the Hungarian AI Strategy, the institutional framework and the application of AI in the manufacturing sector. The programme was including practice-focused presentations, exciting roundtable discussions and informal networking.

Dr. Zsolt János Viharos, researcher at SZTAKI, lecturer at John von Neumann University and active member of the MI24.0 project team of the Artificial Intelligence Coalition, gave a comprehensive overview about the directions of Industry 4.0 and the concept of the Learning Factory, which is also supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI). In his presentation, Viharos derived the current situation in Hungary from the global and European AI trends, the position of the AI strategy and within this, the elements relevant to the manufacturing industry and the steps for the implementation of this strategy.

On the other hand, the Industry 4.0 trend and its mapping into the AI strategy and current actions were explained. Finally, as a sub-element of one of the directions of the strategy, the formulated Learning Factory concept, whose main objective is to support factories in R&D&I and implementation processes before final production, but which has several other aspects, e.g. business intelligence, in-house manufacturing, provision of virtual environments, etc., was presented, as well as several relevant international examples. In addition, a very exciting round table discussion was held, where the steps, challenges and opportunities for the uptake/expansion of AI were discussed and several issues raised locally were answered.

Moreover, the closing comments of the conference were also interesting in which the general manager of the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry appointed the topic of the next conference in May: the experts of EPIC and Fraunhofer will introduce their Industry 4.0 maturity solutions that are applied daily for supporting companies e.g. to form their Industry 4.0 strategy.