The Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production (RICAIP) is a H2020 Teaming project based on a consortium of four founding members (CVUT-CIIRC, BUT-CEITEC, DFKI and ZeMA) that aims to jointly establish the independent Centre of Excellence for Industry 4.0 relevant areas.
There is an evident demand of the Czech industry for more open and diverse environment that would enable wider access to the global market. RICAIP will answer such call by the establishment of a new Center of Excellence enabling cooperation of academia and industry within the very first distributed testbed based on open-access principles, which will be accessible for strategic EU industries and excellent researchers worldwide. The RICAIP Centre addresses current needs, gaps and demands of the industrial sector by enabling cutting edge research solutions in Industry 4.0.
The project’s ambition is to establish the RICAIP Centre as the independent international hub for Industry 4.0 which will bring new, smart, safe, and sophisticated solutions to distributed (multi-site) industrial production of the future. The four founding partners of the RICAIP Centre will jointly build up a unique, virtually connected, experimental facility (the RICAIP Testbed) that would enable excellent research and cooperation of academia and industry in the field of cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence, production systems, and other relevant topics of Industry 4.0 Initiatives. The RICAIP Testbed will be based on the current experimental facilities of the partnering organizations in Prague, Brno and Saarbrücken, that need to be upgraded to enable their interconnection and joint operation. The long-term objectives of the RICAIP Centre will be implemented by a virtual “joint venture” of the RICAIP Project partners, at the Czech side benefiting from established infrastructure and organizational set up of interdisciplinary university research institutes (both CVUT-CIIRC and BUT-CEITEC).
The RICAIP Centre mission is to define the future of the Czech strategic industry and to contribute to the European manufacturing potential. By creating unique open access research capabilities on a multinational / European level, the RICAIP Centre enhances the ecosystems of value chains of major EU industries, providing comprehensive support for Industry 4.0 & beyond to the community of SMEs, using a geographically distributed experimental Testbed (RICAIP Testbed) as an industrial relevant environment for open ideas and innovations. The newly established RICAIP Centre will promote and enhance current research excellence in artificial intelligence, advanced production systems, and smart infrastructure management.
Surprisingly, no R&D infrastructure of pan-European interest has been established yet to foster this strategic sector of economy. Missing European research infrastructure and open core facility for advanced industrial production is a clear handicap in developing the concept of Industry 4.0 and promoting industrial competitiveness towards modern, clean, and fair economy. The RICAIP Centre vision therefore allies with an open distributed EU R&D Infrastructure on advanced industrial production as a sustainable and efficient EU Testbed Core addressing new challenges of the industrial production and production development, “assuring maximum return on investment in terms of science, knowledge, innovation, training, socio economic benefits, and competitiveness” and promoting the ecosystem of trust for strategic EU industries (such as automotive and aircraft). The RICAIP Centre aims to enter national Roadmaps of Research Infrastructures with a long-term ambition of transforming the RICAIP Centre to an ERIC legal entity. .
