Did you know that there is a small pot of funding (€1.5k) available for SMEs and individuals to develop their AI use cases in-order-to share them widely with the rest of Europe?. There is also the chance to get a further €30.000 for scaling implementation of your use case.

In this article, I share the most important bits from the European AI on Demand Platform (AIPlan4U) and the newly launched AI4EU Experiments project.

AIPlan4EU - What is it?

The AIPlan4EU project aims to make modern planning technology applicable for everyone. The platform brings AI stakeholders and AI resources together in one dedicated place, overcoming fragmentation, so that AI-based innovations (research, products, solutions) will be accelerated.

They aim to do this through:

• Developing real-world use cases
• Establish a general planner-agnostic API for planning systems
• Connect planners and use-cases via the new API
• Spread the knowledge Integrate planning in the new platform

Why does this matter?

AI-powered and automated planning and scheduling have long been a major part of AI research and as we know in the manufacturing sector are particularly useful. However, the uptake of such technology has been slow across the sector leaving industry across Europe behind when it comes to modernisation.

How can you get involved?

There are several ways:

Call for use-cases

AIPlan4EU is asking individuals and SMEs to contribute use-cases and for innovators who want to integrate their planning technology or develop technology-specific bridges. Participants can apply to receive funding of €1500 to develop their use-case with the next call is starting in July. 

The website has examples of previous use cases from logistics, agriculture, production and much more. The initiative provides equity-free funding to attract, select and fund the most appropriate external partners to develop AI planning use-cases and implement them in other project open calls.

Join the community

AI4EU hosts additional information of interest including open funding opportunities, a catalogue AI service providers, upskilling resources, and guidance on the development of trustworthy AI tools. It’s a good opportunity to get involved and be keep in the loop with the main AI initiatives across Europe.

The project will also be developing a general and planner-agnostic API that will both be served by the AI4EU platform and be available as a resource to be integrated into the users' systems. The framework will be validated on use-cases both from within the consortium and outside. They also hope to develop a standard interface between the framework and common industrial technologies to be developed and made available to all. This is a great opportunity to get involved and be keep in the loop with AI initiatives across Europe, check out the website below.

Get involved in experiments

The AI4EU Experiments platform is an open-source platform for the development, training, sharing and deployment of AI models. It offers an AI toolkit and has a focus on interoperability that supports a diverse set of tools for TensorFlow, SciKitLearn, RCloud, H2O and generic Java. For more info check out the link below.

Get training

In the coming months, the platform will roll out an on-demand education space with the aim of creating a searchable directory of training initiatives across secondary, higher education and for professionals.

Further reading

Submit your usecase, website

AIPlan4EU, website

AI4EU Experiments platform