Research Council Industrie 4.0 to award contract on artificial intelligence and industrial work

Munich, 21 February 2023

Artificial intelligence is penetrating ever further into all areas of life and work – with AI-based systems increasingly supporting people working in industrial production, too. What are the implications for future employment that arise from applying these systems? The Research Council Industrie 4.0 wants to find answers to these and other pertinent questions in an expert report and is awarding a contract for research and development to this end.

The tendered expert report is to show which design options and development prospects exist in industrial work in the spirit of a human-centred system design for AI and which other needs within research and development persist. The field of investigation must include various segments of industrial work – for example industrial production lines for small (e.g. machinery and plant engineering) or large quantities (e.g. automotive) or process manufacturing (e.g. chemicals or food).

The respective field within the segment investigated must be directly or indirectly affected by the introduction of AI-based systems. Practical examples should be drawn upon to illustrate this. The aim of the expert report is to extrapolate specific courses of action to take for policymakers, science and business. In total, EUR 90,000 in public funding is available for the R&D contract. For further information, see the current call for proposals (in German) and the previous expert reports of the Research Council Industrie 4.0. Universities, universities of applied science, colleges and extramural institutions are invited to submit a proposal by 22 March.

About the Research Council Industrie 4.0

As a strategic and independent body, the Research Council Industrie 4.0 plays a key role in identifying research-based solutions for the further development and implementation of Industrie 4.0 – with the overarching aim to strengthen Germany’s innovation system and value creation. To this end, 32 representatives from science and industry come together with their interdisciplinary knowledge to formulate new research impulses and needs that can be answered at  pre-competitive stages as well as to identify medium- to long-term development perspectives and deduct courses of action to take for the successful implementation of Industrie 4.0. The Research Council’s work is coordinated by acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering, supervised by the Karlsruhe Project Management Agency (PTKA) and sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).