Research is all about being the first, but commercialization is all about repeatability, not just many times but every single time. This was one of the key takeaways from the Transitioning Research From Academia to Industry panel during the National Robotics Initiative Foundational Research in Robotics PI Meeting on March 10 2021. I had the pleasure of moderating a discussion between Lael Odhner, Co-Founder of RightHand Robotics, Andrea Thomaz, Co-Founder/CEO of Diligent Robotics and Assoc Prof at UTexas Austin, and Kel Guerin, Co-Founder/CIO of READY Robotics.

RightHand Robotics, Diligent Robotics and READY Robotics are young robotics startups that have all transitioned from the ICorps program and SBIR grant funding into becoming venture backed robotics startups. RightHand Robotics was founded in 2014 and is a Boston based company that specializes in robotics manipulation. It is spun out of work performed for the DARPA Autonomous Robotics Manipulation program and has since raised more than $34.3 million from investors that include Maniv Mobility, Playground and Menlo Ventures.

Diligent Robotics is based in Austin where they design and build robots like Moxi that assist clinical staff with routine activities so they can focus on caring for patients. Diligent Robotics is the youngest startup, founded in 2017 and having raised $15.8 million so far from investors that include True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures. Andrea Thomaz maintains her position at UTexas Austin but has taken leave to focus on Diligent Robotics.

READY Robotics creates unique solutions that remove the barriers faced by small manufacturers when adopting robotic automation. Founded in 2016, and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the company has raised more than $41.8 million with investors that include Drive Capital and Canaan Capital. READY Robotics enables manufacturers to more easily deploy robots to the factory floor through a patented technology platform that combines a very easy to use programming interface and plug’n’play hardware. This enables small to medium sized manufacturers to be more competitive through the use of industrial robots.

To summarize the conversation into 8 key takeaways for startups.

1. Research is primarily involved in developing a prototype (works once), whereas commercialization requires a product (works every time). Robustness and reliability are essential features of whatever you build.
2. The customer development focus of the ICorps program speeds up the commercialization process, by forcing you into the field to talk face to face with potential customers and deeply explore their issues.
3. Don’t lead with the robot! Get comfortable talking to people and learn to speak the language your customers use. Your job is to solve their problem, not persuade them to use your technology.
4. The faster you can deeply embed yourself with your first customers, the faster you attain the critical knowledge that lets you define your product’s essential features, that the majority of your customers will need, from the merely ‘nice to have’ features or ‘one off’ ideas that can be misdirection.
5. Team building is your biggest challenge, as many roles you will need to hire for are outside of your own experience. Conduct preparatory interviews with experts in an area that you don’t know, so that you learn what real expertize looks like, what questions to ask and what skillsets to look for.
6. There is a lack of robotics skill sets in the marketplace so learn to look for transferable skills from other disciplines.
7. It is actually easy to get to ‘yes’, but the real trick is knowing when to say ‘no’. In other words, don’t create or agree to bad contracts or term sheets, just for the sake of getting an agreement, considering it a ‘loss leader’. Focus on the agreements that make repeatable business sense for your company.
8. Utilize the resources of your university, the accelerators, alumni funds, tech transfer departments, laboratories, experts and testing facilities.

And for robotics startups that don’t have immediate access to universities, then robotics clusters can provide similar assistance. From large clusters like RoboValley in Odense, MassRobotics in Boston and Silicon Valley Robotics which have startup programs, space and prototyping equipment, to smaller robotics clusters that can still provide a connection point to other resources.

Research is all about being the first, but commercialization is all about repeatability, not just many times but every single time. This was one of the key takeaways from the Transitioning Research From Academia to Industry panel during the National Robotics Initiative Foundational Research in Robotics PI Meeting on March 10 2021. I had the pleasure of moderating a discussion between Lael Odhner, Co-Founder of RightHand Robotics, Andrea Thomaz, Co-Founder/CEO of Diligent Robotics and Assoc Prof at UTexas Austin, and Kel Guerin, Co-Founder/CIO of READY Robotics.

RightHand Robotics, Diligent Robotics and READY Robotics are young robotics startups that have all transitioned from the ICorps program and SBIR grant funding into becoming venture backed robotics startups. RightHand Robotics was founded in 2014 and is a Boston based company that specializes in robotics manipulation. It is spun out of work performed for the DARPA Autonomous Robotics Manipulation program and has since raised more than $34.3 million from investors that include Maniv Mobility, Playground and Menlo Ventures.

Diligent Robotics is based in Austin where they design and build robots like Moxi that assist clinical staff with routine activities so they can focus on caring for patients. Diligent Robotics is the youngest startup, founded in 2017 and having raised $15.8 million so far from investors that include True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures. Andrea Thomaz maintains her position at UTexas Austin but has taken leave to focus on Diligent Robotics.

READY Robotics creates unique solutions that remove the barriers faced by small manufacturers when adopting robotic automation. Founded in 2016, and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the company has raised more than $41.8 million with investors that include Drive Capital and Canaan Capital. READY Robotics enables manufacturers to more easily deploy robots to the factory floor through a patented technology platform that combines a very easy to use programming interface and plug’n’play hardware. This enables small to medium sized manufacturers to be more competitive through the use of industrial robots.

To summarize the conversation into 8 key takeaways for startups.

1. Research is primarily involved in developing a prototype (works once), whereas commercialization requires a product (works every time). Robustness and reliability are essential features of whatever you build.
2. The customer development focus of the ICorps program speeds up the commercialization process, by forcing you into the field to talk face to face with potential customers and deeply explore their issues.
3. Don’t lead with the robot! Get comfortable talking to people and learn to speak the language your customers use. Your job is to solve their problem, not persuade them to use your technology.
4. The faster you can deeply embed yourself with your first customers, the faster you attain the critical knowledge that lets you define your product’s essential features, that the majority of your customers will need, from the merely ‘nice to have’ features or ‘one off’ ideas that can be misdirection.
5. Team building is your biggest challenge, as many roles you will need to hire for are outside of your own experience. Conduct preparatory interviews with experts in an area that you don’t know, so that you learn what real expertize looks like, what questions to ask and what skillsets to look for.
6. There is a lack of robotics skill sets in the marketplace so learn to look for transferable skills from other disciplines.
7. It is actually easy to get to ‘yes’, but the real trick is knowing when to say ‘no’. In other words, don’t create or agree to bad contracts or term sheets, just for the sake of getting an agreement, considering it a ‘loss leader’. Focus on the agreements that make repeatable business sense for your company.
8. Utilize the resources of your university, the accelerators, alumni funds, tech transfer departments, laboratories, experts and testing facilities.

And for robotics startups that don’t have immediate access to universities, then robotics clusters can provide similar assistance. From large clusters like RoboValley in Odense, MassRobotics in Boston and Silicon Valley Robotics which have startup programs, space and prototyping equipment, to smaller robotics clusters that can still provide a connection point to other resources.

Abate interviews Tessa Lau on her startup Dusty Robotics which is innovating in the field of construction.

At Dusty Robotics, they developed a robot to automate the laying of floor plans on the floors in construction sites. Typically, this is done manually using a tape measure and reading printed out plans. This difficult task can often take a team of two a week to complete. Time-consuming tasks like this are incredibly expensive on a construction site where multiple different teams are waiting on this task to complete. Any errors in this process are even more time-consuming to fix. By using a robot to automatically convert 3d models of building plans into markings on the floors, the amount of time and errors are dramatically reduced.

Dr. Tessa Lau

Dr. Tessa Lau is an experienced entrepreneur with expertise in AI, machine learning, and robotics. She is currently Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, a construction robotics company building robot-powered tools for the modern construction workforce. Prior to Dusty, she was CTO/co-founder at Savioke, where she orchestrated the deployment of 75+ delivery robots into hotels and high-rises. Previously, Dr. Lau was a Research Scientist at Willow Garage, where she developed simple interfaces for personal robots. She also spent 11 years at IBM Research working in business process automation and knowledge capture. More generally, Dr. Lau is interested in technology that gives people super-powers, and building businesses that bring that technology into people’s lives. Dr. Lau was recognized as one of the Top 5 Innovative Women to Watch in Robotics by Inc. in 2018 and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2015. Dr. Lau holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

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The European Commission has published a report by an independent group of experts on Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). This report advises on specific ethical issues raised by driverless mobility for road transport. The report aims to promote a safe and responsible transition to connected and automated vehicles by supporting stakeholders in the systematic inclusion of ethical considerations in the development and regulation of CAVs.

The report presents 20 ethical recommendations concerning the future development and use of CAVs based on ethical and legal principles. The recommendations are discussed in the context of three topics areas:

Road Safety, Risk, Dilemmas

Improvements in safety achieved by CAVs should be publicly demonstrable and monitored through solid and shared scientific methods and data; these improvements should be achieved in compliance with basic ethical and legal principles, such as a fair distribution of risk and the protection of basic rights, including those of vulnerable users; these same considerations should apply to dilemma scenarios.

Data and algorithm Ethics: Privacy, Fairness, Explainability

The acquisition and processing of static and dynamic data by CAVs should safeguard basic privacy rights, should not create discrimination between users, and should happen via processes that are accessible and understandable to the subjects involved.

Responsibility

Considering who should be liable for paying compensation following a collision is not sufficient; it is also important to make different stakeholders willing, able and motivated to take responsibility for preventing undesirable outcomes and promoting societally beneficial outcomes of CAVs, that is creating a culture of responsibility for CAVs.

Read the full report.

In the last online technical talk, Adam Bry and Hayk Martiros from Skydio explained how their company tackles real-world issues when it comes to drone flying.

Abstract

Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight. Our drones are used for everything from capturing amazing video, to inspecting bridges, to tracking progress on construction sites. At the core of our products is a vision-based autonomy system with seven years of development at Skydio, drawing on decades of academic research. This system pushes the state of the art in deep learning, geometric computer vision, motion planning, and control with a particular focus on real-world robustness. Drones encounter extreme visual scenarios not typically considered by academia nor encountered by cars, ground robots, or AR applications. They are commonly flown in scenes with few or no semantic priors and must deftly navigate thin objects, extreme lighting, camera artifacts, motion blur, textureless surfaces, vibrations, dirt, camera smudges, and fog. These challenges are daunting for classical vision – because photometric signals are simply not consistent and for learning-based methods – because there is no ground truth for direct supervision of deep networks. In this talk we’ll take a detailed look at these issues and the algorithms we’ve developed to tackle them. We will also cover the new capabilities on top of our core navigation engine to autonomously map complex scenes and capture all surfaces, by performing real-time 3D reconstruction across multiple flights.

Biography

Adam is co-founder and CEO at Skydio. He has two decades of experience with small UAS, starting as a national champion R/C airplane aerobatics pilot. As a grad student at MIT, he did award winning research that pioneered autonomous flight for drones, transferring much of what he learned as an R/C pilot into software that enables drones to fly themselves. Adam co-founded Google’s drone delivery project. He currently serves on the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Olin College and an SM in Aero/Astro from MIT. He has co-authored numerous technical papers and patents, and was also recognized on MIT’s TR35 list for young innovators.

Hayk was the first engineering hire at Skydio and he leads the autonomy team. He is an experienced roboticist who develops robust approaches to computer vision, deep learning, nonlinear optimization, and motion planning to bring intelligent robots into the mainstream. His team’s state of the art work in UAV visual localization, obstacle avoidance, and navigation of complex scenarios is at the core of every Skydio drone. He also has an interest in systems architecture and symbolic computation. His previous works include novel hexapedal robots, collaboration between robot arms, micro-robot factories, solar panel farms, and self-balancing motorcycles. Hayk is a graduate of Stanford University and Princeton University.

Featuring Guest Panelist: Davide Scaramuzza and Margaritha Chli

The next technical talk is happening this Friday the 12th of March at 3pm EST. Join Chad Jenkins from the University of Michigan in his talk ‘That Ain’t Right: AI Mistakes and Black Lives’ using this link.

By Terri Park | MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Traditional computer scientists and engineers are trained to develop solutions for specific needs, but aren’t always trained to consider their broader implications. Each new technology generation, and particularly the rise of artificial intelligence, leads to new kinds of systems, new ways of creating tools, and new forms of data, for which norms, rules, and laws frequently have yet to catch up. The kinds of impact that such innovations have in the world has often not been apparent until many years later.

As part of the efforts in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) within the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, a new case studies series examines social, ethical, and policy challenges of present-day efforts in computing with the aim of facilitating the development of responsible “habits of mind and action” for those who create and deploy computing technologies.

“Advances in computing have undeniably changed much of how we live and work. Understanding and incorporating broader social context is becoming ever more critical,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “This case study series is designed to be a basis for discussions in the classroom and beyond, regarding social, ethical, economic, and other implications so that students and researchers can pursue the development of technology across domains in a holistic manner that addresses these important issues.”

A modular system

By design, the case studies are brief and modular to allow users to mix and match the content to fit a variety of pedagogical needs. Series editors David Kaiser and Julie Shah, who are the associate deans for SERC, structured the cases primarily to be appropriate for undergraduate instruction across a range of classes and fields of study.

“Our goal was to provide a seamless way for instructors to integrate cases into an existing course or cluster several cases together to support a broader module within a course. They might also use the cases as a starting point to design new courses that focus squarely on themes of social and ethical responsibilities of computing,” says Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics.

Shah, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and a roboticist who designs systems in which humans and machines operate side by side, expects that the cases will also be of interest to those outside of academia, including computing professionals, policy specialists, and general readers. In curating the series, Shah says that “we interpret ‘social and ethical responsibilities of computing’ broadly to focus on perspectives of people who are affected by various technologies, as well as focus on perspectives of designers and engineers.”

The cases are not limited to a particular format and can take shape in various forms — from a magazine-like feature article or Socratic dialogues to choose-your-own-adventure stories or role-playing games grounded in empirical research. Each case study is brief, but includes accompanying notes and references to facilitate more in-depth exploration of a given topic. Multimedia projects will also be considered. “The main goal is to present important material — based on original research — in engaging ways to broad audiences of non-specialists,” says Kaiser.

The SERC case studies are specially commissioned and written by scholars who conduct research centrally on the subject of the piece. Kaiser and Shah approached researchers from within MIT as well as from other academic institutions to bring in a mix of diverse voices on a spectrum of topics. Some cases focus on a particular technology or on trends across platforms, while others assess social, historical, philosophical, legal, and cultural facets that are relevant for thinking critically about current efforts in computing and data sciences.

The cases published in the inaugural issue place readers in various settings that challenge them to consider the social and ethical implications of computing technologies, such as how social media services and surveillance tools are built; the racial disparities that can arise from deploying facial recognition technology in unregulated, real-world settings; the biases of risk prediction algorithms in the criminal justice system; and the politicization of data collection.

“Most of us agree that we want computing to work for social good, but which good? Whose good? Whose needs and values and worldviews are prioritized and whose are overlooked?” says Catherine D’Ignazio, an assistant professor of urban science and planning and director of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT.

D’Ignazio’s case for the series, co-authored with Lauren Klein, an associate professor in the English and Quantitative Theory and Methods departments at Emory University, introduces readers to the idea that while data are useful, they are not always neutral. “These case studies help us understand the unequal histories that shape our technological systems as well as study their disparate outcomes and effects. They are an exciting step towards holistic, sociotechnical thinking and making.”

Rigorously reviewed

Kaiser and Shah formed an editorial board composed of 55 faculty members and senior researchers associated with 19 departments, labs, and centers at MIT, and instituted a rigorous peer-review policy model commonly adopted by specialized journals. Members of the editorial board will also help commission topics for new cases and help identify authors for a given topic.

For each submission, the series editors collect four to six peer reviews, with reviewers mostly drawn from the editorial board. For each case, half the reviewers come from fields in computing and data sciences and half from fields in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, to ensure balance of topics and presentation within a given case study and across the series.

“Over the past two decades I’ve become a bit jaded when it comes to the academic review process, and so I was particularly heartened to see such care and thought put into all of the reviews,” says Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the School of Information. “The constructive review process made our case study significantly stronger.”

Farid’s case, “The Dangers of Risk Prediction in the Criminal Justice System,” which he penned with Julia Dressel, recently a student of computer science at Dartmouth College, is one of the four commissioned pieces featured in the inaugural issue.

Cases are additionally reviewed by undergraduate volunteers, who help the series editors gauge each submission for balance, accessibility for students in multiple fields of study, and possibilities for adoption in specific courses. The students also work with them to create original homework problems and active learning projects to accompany each case study, to further facilitate adoption of the original materials across a range of existing undergraduate subjects.

“I volunteered to work with this group because I believe that it’s incredibly important for those working in computer science to include thinking about ethics not as an afterthought, but integrated into every step and decision that is made, says Annie Snyder, a mathematical economics sophomore and a member of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s Undergraduate Advisory Group. “While this is a massive issue to take on, this project is an amazing opportunity to start building an ethical culture amongst the incredibly talented students at MIT who will hopefully carry it forward into their own projects and workplace.”

New sets of case studies, produced with support from the MIT Press’ Open Publishing Services program, will be published twice a year via the Knowledge Futures Group’s PubPub platform. The SERC case studies are made available for free on an open-access basis, under Creative Commons licensing terms. Authors retain copyright, enabling them to reuse and republish their work in more specialized scholarly publications.

“It was important to us to approach this project in an inclusive way and lower the barrier for people to be able to access this content. These are complex issues that we need to deal with, and we hope that by making the cases widely available, more people will engage in social and ethical considerations as they’re studying and developing computing technologies,” says Shah.

On the 27th of January, DIHNET revealed the winners of the 2020 DIH Champions Challenge at the virtual EDIH Conference 2021 “Gearing up towards European Digital Innovation Hubs”. The awards ceremony gathered more than 1176 participants including Digital Innovation Hubs, designated EDIHs, regions and Member States, representatives of EEN, Clusters, SME associations, among other stakeholders.

DIHNET.EU was pioneer in launching the annual DIH Champions Challenge for identifying mature Digital Innovation Hubs in Europe. Begoña Sanchez, Innovation Systems and Policies manager at Tecnalia, and member of the DIHNET consortium, explains that the main purpose of this initiative is “to provide the DIHs community with a process for identifying good practices, showcase and support success stories of Mature DIHs that can inspire and guide other DIHs in their development.”

In this second edition, four DIHs were shortlisted as finalists: the am-LAB, the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH), the FZI Research Center for Information Technology and the ITI Data Hub (The Data Cycle Hub). The DIHNET consortium revised the proposals with the contribution of two external evaluators: Jan Kobliha, Ministerial Counsellor at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Thorsten Huelsmann, manager of the Digital Hub Logistics Dortmund, winner of the 2019 DIH Champions Challenge. “The different applications from the DIHs have once again demonstrated that the different approaches and structures of DIHs in Europe are diverse and heterogeneous as the European regions and members states are. Each application has shown an individual service and format portfolio, governance structure and operations model which fits to the requirements of the customers in the innovation or digital transformation value chain” explains Thorsten. Jan Kobliha, external evaluator in both contests, adds that “this year the proposals were more mature and the results of the top ones were comparable to each other, which is a huge difference to last year, where we had one absolute champion. In Europe there is a huge increase of DIH projects, some of them aspiring to become a EDIH and they have gained more experience”.

The 2020 DIH Champions Challenge winners are two Digital Innovation Hubs that have demonstrated a leading level of maturity: the am-LAB (Hungary) and the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (Spain).

From DIHNET we want to congratulate both winners – am-LAB and the Basque DIH – for this great achievement, and also to the two finalists ITI Data Hub and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology. We hope other Digital Innovation Hubs see them as a source of inspiration for the future.

Meet the finalists

am-LAB
Located in the West Pannon region of Hungary, the am-LAB is the daughter company of Pannon Business Network Association – PBN. This DIH promotes and assists digitisation of SMEs in Western Hungary and works as an anchor of the regional digitisation initiatives in SME manufacturing. The local innovation technology transfer network has strong organically developed relations. Members of the hub are the local university – ELTE Multidisciplinary Science Network, local manufacturing companies and a cluster of mechatronic manufacturing SMEs. The regional government is also supporting and closely following the progress of the DIH. http://www.amlab.hu/

Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH)
The Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH) is a non-for-profit initiative that provides European industrial fabric -especially Basque SMEs- an easy and cost-efficient access to innovative and excellent scientific-technological capabilities required to meet the challenges of the Industry 4.0 in the Advanced Manufacturing environment. This DIH located in Spain consists of a digitally-linked network of R+D infrastructures, pilot plants and specialised know-how in 6 different areas: Additive Manufacturing, Flexible and Collaborative Robotics, Cybersecurity, Big Data Analytics, Smart and Connected Machines and New Materials.
http://www.spri.eus/en/basque-industry/basque-digital-innovation-hub/

FZI Research Center for Information Technology
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, is a non-profit institution for applied research in information technology and technology transfer. Its task is to provide businesses and public institutions with the latest research findings in information technology. It also qualifies young researchers for their career in academics or business as well as self-employment. http://www.fzi.de/en/home/

ITI Data Hub (The Data Cycle Hub)
The Data Cycle Hub has a non-for-profit aim and is coordinated and led by ITI, also a non-for-profit Research Centre and a reference on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Valencia region, Spain. The objective of this DIH is to bridge the gap between research and industry, specifically SMEs, providing innovative solutions and services that require advanced data analytics, automatic learning and artificial intelligence. The Data Cycle Hub addresses primarily Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, but also other key digital enabling technologies like Cyber Physical Systems, IoT, Cloud and High-Performance Computing Platforms or statistics optimisation. https://thedatacyclehub.com/en/

To know more about these Digital Innovation Hubs visit their respective websites and the JRC DIH catalogue: https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/digital-innovation-hubs-tool

Note from the Managing Editor: This post has been merged from this article and this article.

On the 27th of January, DIHNET revealed the winners of the 2020 DIH Champions Challenge at the virtual EDIH Conference 2021 “Gearing up towards European Digital Innovation Hubs”. The awards ceremony gathered more than 1176 participants including Digital Innovation Hubs, designated EDIHs, regions and Member States, representatives of EEN, Clusters, SME associations, among other stakeholders.

DIHNET.EU was pioneer in launching the annual DIH Champions Challenge for identifying mature Digital Innovation Hubs in Europe. Begoña Sanchez, Innovation Systems and Policies manager at Tecnalia, and member of the DIHNET consortium, explains that the main purpose of this initiative is “to provide the DIHs community with a process for identifying good practices, showcase and support success stories of Mature DIHs that can inspire and guide other DIHs in their development.”

In this second edition, four DIHs were shortlisted as finalists: the am-LAB, the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH), the FZI Research Center for Information Technology and the ITI Data Hub (The Data Cycle Hub). The DIHNET consortium revised the proposals with the contribution of two external evaluators: Jan Kobliha, Ministerial Counsellor at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Thorsten Huelsmann, manager of the Digital Hub Logistics Dortmund, winner of the 2019 DIH Champions Challenge. “The different applications from the DIHs have once again demonstrated that the different approaches and structures of DIHs in Europe are diverse and heterogeneous as the European regions and members states are. Each application has shown an individual service and format portfolio, governance structure and operations model which fits to the requirements of the customers in the innovation or digital transformation value chain” explains Thorsten. Jan Kobliha, external evaluator in both contests, adds that “this year the proposals were more mature and the results of the top ones were comparable to each other, which is a huge difference to last year, where we had one absolute champion. In Europe there is a huge increase of DIH projects, some of them aspiring to become a EDIH and they have gained more experience”.

The 2020 DIH Champions Challenge winners are two Digital Innovation Hubs that have demonstrated a leading level of maturity: the am-LAB (Hungary) and the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (Spain).

From DIHNET we want to congratulate both winners – am-LAB and the Basque DIH – for this great achievement, and also to the two finalists ITI Data Hub and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology. We hope other Digital Innovation Hubs see them as a source of inspiration for the future.

Meet the finalists

am-LAB
Located in the West Pannon region of Hungary, the am-LAB is the daughter company of Pannon Business Network Association – PBN. This DIH promotes and assists digitisation of SMEs in Western Hungary and works as an anchor of the regional digitisation initiatives in SME manufacturing. The local innovation technology transfer network has strong organically developed relations. Members of the hub are the local university – ELTE Multidisciplinary Science Network, local manufacturing companies and a cluster of mechatronic manufacturing SMEs. The regional government is also supporting and closely following the progress of the DIH. http://www.amlab.hu/

Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH)
The Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH) is a non-for-profit initiative that provides European industrial fabric -especially Basque SMEs- an easy and cost-efficient access to innovative and excellent scientific-technological capabilities required to meet the challenges of the Industry 4.0 in the Advanced Manufacturing environment. This DIH located in Spain consists of a digitally-linked network of R+D infrastructures, pilot plants and specialised know-how in 6 different areas: Additive Manufacturing, Flexible and Collaborative Robotics, Cybersecurity, Big Data Analytics, Smart and Connected Machines and New Materials.
http://www.spri.eus/en/basque-industry/basque-digital-innovation-hub/

FZI Research Center for Information Technology
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, is a non-profit institution for applied research in information technology and technology transfer. Its task is to provide businesses and public institutions with the latest research findings in information technology. It also qualifies young researchers for their career in academics or business as well as self-employment. http://www.fzi.de/en/home/

ITI Data Hub (The Data Cycle Hub)
The Data Cycle Hub has a non-for-profit aim and is coordinated and led by ITI, also a non-for-profit Research Centre and a reference on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Valencia region, Spain. The objective of this DIH is to bridge the gap between research and industry, specifically SMEs, providing innovative solutions and services that require advanced data analytics, automatic learning and artificial intelligence. The Data Cycle Hub addresses primarily Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, but also other key digital enabling technologies like Cyber Physical Systems, IoT, Cloud and High-Performance Computing Platforms or statistics optimisation. https://thedatacyclehub.com/en/

To know more about these Digital Innovation Hubs visit their respective websites and the JRC DIH catalogue: https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/digital-innovation-hubs-tool

Note from the Managing Editor: This post has been merged from this article and this article.