RICAIP Centre
RICAIP – Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production is an international distributed research centre of excellence (CoE) that focuses on research in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). RICAIP is based on a strategic partnership of four leading Czech and German research institutions.
The founding partners are CIIRC CTU together with CEITEC BUT in Brno, DFKI (Deutsches Forschungzentrum für Kunstliche Intelligenz) and ZeMA (Zentrum für Mechatronik und Automatisierungstechnik) based in Saarbrücken.
RICAIP develops a strong cooperation at an international level evolving the concept of Industry 4.0. The centre connects multi-site experimental workplaces – the testbeds – in Prague, Brno, and Saarbrücken. With a maximum degree of autonomy, the RICAIP Centre is hosted at CIIRC CTU in Prague with the direct participation of all its four founding partners.
The establishment of the RICAIP Centre is the main objective of the RICAIP Project that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and from the ESIF OP RDE in the total amount of EUR 48.47 mil for the period 09/2019-12/2026.
Testbeds
The centre connects testbeds in Prague, Brno and Saarbruecken to enable remote industrial production control or rapid adaptation according to the customer’s current needs or available means of production.
Vision
Our vision is to establish RICAIP as a key entity in major European research infrastructures for artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and computer science for advanced industry and production.
- Building an AI ecosystem for industrial manufacturing
- Research infrastructure for various projects and funding
- Latest technology usable by large corporates and SMEs
- Networking across the European AI community
- Synergic activities with major European
- AI and manufacturing initiatives
Mission
- to create a collaborative ecosystem for academia, industry, national and regional authorities
- to produce high-impact and application-oriented research results for producing and manufacturing companies
- to build a distributed research and experimental workplace, the first testbed core of its kind in Europe
- to become a major contributor to the international standardization efforts and cybersecurity
- to facilitate technology and knowledge transfer from academia to industry through the development of technical solutions tested in the relevant industrial environment
Objectives
- Focus on the research field of advanced manufacturing with scientific impact
- Boosting the scientific excellence and innovation
- Addressing highly ranked challenges of the EU economy and society
- Enhancing Industry 4.0 and industrial competitiveness through collaboration, scientific, innovation and business strategies
- Benefiting from governmental support, and strong social and economic ties between the Czech Republic and Germany
- Promoting research and collaboration with non-technical fields to tackle the societal challenges
Unique Selling Points
- Research expertise and specialized know-how in system integration and customer driven flexible production system development
- Ecosystem oriented on automotive and aircraft industry, their parts and machine suppliers, service providers and integrators
- Unique industrial platform based on Production as a Service (PaaS)
- Nurturing of human resources – tenure track policy
- Making connections with new networks of contacts
- Distributed and application-oriented testbed – allowing research on various aspects of real-life production and supply chains
Industry 4.0
RICAIP aims to strengthen research in industrial production with the results of artificial intelligence research. To develop strong cooperation at an international level. The concept of Industry 4.0 must address current needs, gaps, and demands of the industrial sector and society. To simulate and practically verify the concept of distributed production, RICAIP creates a virtually interconnected state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure in the form of the Industrial Testbed Core.
