The RSA FG studio SDIS in St. Pölten participates as a consortium member, work package leader and partner in the EU- and FFG funded project AIMS5.0, coordinated by Infineon Technologies AG. In the past year, it hosted two events to further the project’s efforts to enhance European digital sovereignty by integrating AI-enabled hardware and software components across the entire industrial value chain.
Only one year ago, the many partners of the ambitious Chips JU project AIMS5.0 started their work. The initiative focuses on increasing production efficiency, reducing supply chain vulnerabilities, and fostering sustainable, climate-friendly production practices. Key objectives include developing AI tools for sustainable industrial processes, implementing an open-access platform for semantic data integration, and ensuring human-centered, ethical AI applications in manufacturing. The project will validate its outcomes through 20 use cases spanning nine industrial domains, ultimately supporting the Green Deal and advancing towards Industry 5.0. With two more years to go, it’s time for a recap of the studio’s efforts in the project.
In a blog post on behalf of the AIMS5.0 consortium, Ralf Hartmann sums it up as follows: “During the first year, major steps were taken for a successful intensive research work to elaborate crucial foundations for the next big step in the digital transformation of the European industry.“ AIMS5.0 is a posterchild for collaboration across countries and disciplines. Over 50 partners share their skills and knowledge in different work packages and use cases.
The studio SDIS of the RSA FG supports work package 7 (“Human Acceptance, Trust, and Ethics for Digital Workspaces”) as a co-leader by developing guidelines for the application of AI in the European AI industry, ensuring these align with current guidelines and legal frameworks while maintaining ethical integrity as well as enhancing its acceptance. Additionally, the team in St. Pölten is tasked with crafting recommendations for managing changes in digital workspaces.
In work package 3 (“Cyber Architecture for AI supported Sustainable Production”), and 6 (“Artificial Intelligence for Operational Excellence in the ECS”), the studio SDIS supports the use case and technology topics by developing an advanced ML module to autonomously optimize resource usage, such as water and energy. The target use case for this technology is “AI-supported Industrial IoT for Indoor Food Production”.
Workshops and collaborations
One of the first steps towards developing the AI-supported industrial IoT Platform for indoor food production was to align the system architecture with the requirements of an actual indoor farm and the data collected there. For this purpose, a joint workshop with RSA FG’s use case partner was held at PhytonIQ’s headquarter in Oberwart, an industry partner in AIMS5.0 A session was dedicated to discussing the requirements of the system with all partners involved.
For work package 6 (“Artificial Intelligence for Operational Excellence in the ECS”), industry partner Zelosplant in Oberwart called for the first face-to-face meeting. It was hosted by TTTech, another industry partner in AIMS5.0, at their headquarters in Vienna. All partners presented their progress and set out the next steps towards the objectives of the use case.
The Demonstrator: RSA FG’s sandbox environment
The SDIS team has built a demonstrator in St. Pölten which is connected to TTTECH’s “NERVE” system. In this sandbox environment, the researchers grow plants with the nutrient film technique system. It has a water pump and an injector to inject air into the water. It is designed in modules for easier transportation and better scalability. Each module has twelve plants and contains LED strips and a fan to circulate the air. The module located at the base level hosts the water container and the main hardware for monitoring and controlling temperature, humidity, water temperature, pH value, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), and Electric Conductivity (EC) are automatically monitored.
Connections to Arrowhead
The RSA FG is involved in advancing a platform based on prior work for Generic Autonomic Management as a Service within the Arrowhead framework. This will include the extension of the platform with interoperability modules and policy building blocks for Use Case 1 (“AI-powered indoor food production”). Major accomplishments by RSA FG so far were to develop a laboratory sandbox environment for data acquisition and establishing interfaces with the Arrowhead Framework for further development of the autonomic management service. Additionally, the studio SDIS has led work package 7 (“Human Acceptance, Trust, and Ethics for Digital Workspaces”) and completed the setup of a self assessment approach.
Two events by studio SDIS exemplify the collaboration within and the sheer scale of AIMS5.0.: Together with its studio opening in St. Pölten, SDIS hosted a Deep Tech Workshop in September 2023. Also, this year’s general assembly took place in St. Pölten and was organized by the studio. For the general assembly the studio also hosted a public poster and demonstrator walk together with the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten.
Peer-reviewed publications and events
The SDIS team published two peer-reviewed publications which were presented at MFI5.0 workshop at the 2024 IEEE/IFIP NOMS Conference in Seoul, South Korea:
- Abu Naim, B., Ghafourian, Y., Tauber, M., Lindner, F., Schmittner, C., Schoitsch, E.,Schneider, G., Kattan, O., Ryabokon, A., Flamigni, F., Karathanasopoulou, K., & Dimitrakopoulos, G. (2024). A self-assessment tool to encourage the uptake of artificial intelligence in digital workspaces. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Management for Industry 5.0 (MFI5.0), at IFIP/IEEE NOMS 2024 – Network Operations and Management Symposium.
- Abu Naim, B., Ghafourian, Y., Ryabokon, A., Flamigni, F., & Baldrian, R. (2024). A generic framework for resource-limited microcontrollers deployment in I-IoT systems. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Management for Industry 5.0 (MFI5.0), at IFIP/IEEE NOMS 2024 – Network Operations and Management Symposium.
Additionally, RSA FG researchers have participated in a number of events presenting AIMS5.0 and the work packages that their involved it:
- Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) 2023 Summer School in Bertinoro, Italy
- European Conference on Edge AI Technologies and Applications – EEAI 2023, Athens, Greece
- Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence (ASAI), July 2023 at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien).
- The AIMS5.0 and Arrowhead FPVN Innovation Technology Days /23-25 Jan 2024 Lulea
- Presenting AIMS5.0 at “Abschlussevent des Projekts KITE – funded by FFG in April2024.
- Participating in the WP2 Bilateral meeting in Budapest, Hungary to discuss synergies for the AI gym and collaborations with WP3.
So, one year in, the project is already well under way and about to reach its goals in its runtime until 2026.
