France and Germany to fund five joint AI projects to strengthen crisis resilience

Following the publication of a joint call for project proposals, France and Germany are providing funding worth €17.9 million to support five projects to develop new solutions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The main goal of the projects is to develop AI solutions in the area of sustainability, to detect and combat potential epidemics at an early stage, and to make the industry more resilient to supply chain disruptions. 
 
Parliamentary State Secretary Dr Brantner said: "We need to harness the full potential of cutting-edge digital technologies to support the transformation of the economy toward greater climate and environmental protection, strengthen the sovereignty of the German and European economies, and better prepare ourselves for epidemics. This is why we are intensifying our cooperation with France on close-to-application development in the field of artificial intelligence." 
 
Back in 2019, France and Germany agreed to step up their cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence. Following a joint call for project proposals in February 2021, the five winning projects were launched in March and April 2022. 
 
The AIOLOS - Artificial Intelligence Tools for Outbreak Detectionand Response project aims to better prepare us for future epidemics or pandemics using new AI-based models. It seeks to identify new disease outbreaks, predict their spread and evolution, and determine the resources needed to bring epidemics under control. 
Partners: Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research e.V. (DE), Umlaut Consulting GmbH (DE), CompuGroup Medical SE & Co. KGaA (DE), Quinten (FR), Sanofi Pasteur (FR) 
 
The CONTRAILS - Contrails in the Climate System: from Observation to Impact Modeling and Prediction project aims to provide tools for monitoring the impact of contrails on the climate and to support future experimental tests aiming to optimise flight trajectories. 
Partners: German Weather Service (DE), Xelera Technologies (DE), Thales Research & Technology (FR), Reuniwatt SAS (FR), Laboratoire atmosphères, milieux, observations spatiales (FR) 
 
The RenovAIte - Boosting renovation industry with AI project will provide AI-based software to optimise large-scale home and street renovation. The objective is to cover the entire value chain, from initial data capturing to the provision of decision-making advice to planning offices. 
Partners: OFFIS - Institute for Information Technology (DE), VIA IMC (DE), Action Logement (FR), ALEIA (FR), LNRD (FR) 
 
The GreenBotAI - frugal and adaptive AI for flexible industrial robotics project aims to develop an intelligent system for industrial robots to help ensure continuous production in Europe during pandemics, guarantee European sovereignty in terms of production automation, and reduce the environmental impact of European factories by reducing the energy consumption of robotic applications by 50%.  
Partners: Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology (IWU) (DE), Munich University of Applied Sciences (Faculty of Applied Sciences and Mechatronics) (DE), GrAI Matter Labs SAS (FR), Arts et Métiers (ENSAM LISPEN) (FR) 
 
The GANResilRob - Generative Adversarial Networks and Semantics for Resilient, FlexibleProduction Robots project aims to use digital production systems and improved industrial robots to reduce human contact during pandemics by integrating remote task learning and automatic adjustment of production in the event of disruptions to material supply chains. 
Partners: FZI Research Centre for Information Technology (DE), ArtiMinds Robotics GmbH (DE), Secma SA (FR), Two-I SAS (FR), CNRS DR Centre-Est (FR).