Artificial Intelligence and Automotive Industry - Automotive Hungary Conference
The Artificial Intelligence and Automotive Industry conference was held on 18th October, organised by Pannon Business Network Association – am-LAB Digital Innovation Hub (PBN) in the framework of the Automotive Hungary exhibition. The event attracted huge interest, and was held by full house, with domestic and international audience, nearly with 200 registered participants.
The specialty of the event was primarily presented by the invited and respected speakers of digitalisation and innovation - Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Kuka Robotics, Fraunhofer Institute, Dibuco GmbH, etc. They demonstrated the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in practice, as well as the present and future role of it in the automotive industry, with adding international trends. On the other hand, participants gained insight into domestic initiatives from the political and business side (ITM, SZTNH, AI Platform), too.
The topics of the presentations held in the conference strongly coincided with the thematic of the 4STEPS transnational project, realised in the Interreg Central Europe Programme. Pannon Business Network is taking part as a project partner, and is leading the first thematic work package of the 4STEPS project. Within this international cooperation, eight partners from seven Central European countries are working together and currently partners are conducting Industry 4.0. analysis with regional SMEs focusing on both their needs and their level of adaptation to the defined nine I4.0 themes. Within the end of 2019, partners are expected to involve at least 350 SMEs, and following the finalisation of conducting the analysis, country specific and transnational report will be prepared and published. The conference was very beneficial for the project, since the presentations, held by prestigious experts contributed to the activities envisaged in the project, mainly in connection with Industry 4.0 and Digital Innovation Hubs.
The relevance of the two topics is the impact of digitalisation and artificial intelligence on domestic suppliers and the strategic thinking of the big international manufacturing companies. Industrial robotization, automation, and the artificial intelligence serving as basis to these and are becoming increasingly important. The presenters stated without exception that self-driving cars and automated production mean the future. It also affects the workforce, competencies and professional trainings so that domestic suppliers can keep up with international expectations.
As Hungary is only 23rd in the EU innovation ranking, the goal is to achieve improvements through governmental initiatives, such as AI country strategy and other actions.
Subsequently, leading manufacturers agreed that special innovations can only address future challenges, e.g. zero emissions, and AI-applications which are endowed with human abilities and intuitions.
The speakers expounded that the solution lies, among others, in the so-called ACES revolution (autonomous, connected, electric and shared) and disruptive innovations, as well as in ensuring data coherence and creating unified data communication platforms. The organizer, PBN, demonstrated the learning process that raised the company the region’s major player in complex and unique, artificial intelligence-based developments they provide. AI is also the basis for the Zalazone test track, where prototype of self-driving cars is being tested implemented together with the research and development infrastructure elements.
The robots are of particular importance that are being used today in the automotive industry for testing, with cloud-based analytical platform solutions, and intelligent data management. Finally, the public faced with the fact that the number of patents submitted in Hungary are decreasing and only 25% is utilized of them. The country’s primary interest that global value chains bring their high value-added activities to Hungary.
The event organizer PBN’s CEO, Mr Balázs Barta also heads the Artificial Intelligence Work Group of the Danube Region. The conference was concluded by an international meeting of the working group.
