A non-profit organization to use technology to solve challenges
An AI & Robotics Technologies Park (ARTPARK) set up in Bengaluru will promote technology innovations in AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Robotics, enabling international co-creation leading to societal impact by executing R&D projects in healthcare, education, mobility, infrastructure, agriculture, retail and cyber-security focusing on problems unique to India.
Robin Sukhia, Secretary-General and President of the Sweden India Business Council, pointed out that the not-for-profit organisation will enable international co-creation at a higher and deeper level to help solve today’s and tomorrow’s challenges using technology in a unique way.
ARTPARK is a unique not-for-profit foundation established by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) with support from AI Foundry in a public-private model, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on 29 Nov 2020.
With seed funding of Rs.170 crore (US$22 million) from Department of Science & Technology (DST) under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), it will bring about a collaborative consortium of partners from industry, academia and government bodies.
This will lead to cutting-edge innovations in terms of new technologies, standards, products, services and intellectual properties.
Vishal Dhupar, MD of the globally-spread NVIDIA South Asia, underlined the collaborations between NVIDIA and ARTPARK to “enable technology to solve humanity’s grand challenges”.
ARTPARK, in collaboration with AI Foundry, will run a novel ARTPARK Venture Studio that will mentor technopreneurs who will take the outputs of the mission mode projects to launch new startups.
ARTPARK will develop AI & Robotics facilities to support technology innovations as well as capacity building through advanced skills training of students and professionals in these areas.
Some of these facilities will be key enablers for whole new sets of technologies, products and services. It will develop DataSetu – that will enable confidentiality and privacy-preserving framework to share data and run analytics spurring the data-sharing ecosystem and create a data marketplace, boosting AI applications and solutions.
One such service will be BhashaSetu – that will enable real-time Indic language translation, both of speech to speech and speech to text. This will further unlock the economic potential of the country, and enable all Indian citizens to equitably participate in the economic progress, regardless of their language.
“The National Mission ICPS with its 25 Hubs has a unique architecture that envisages a strong collaboration and co-ownership among the triple helix of industry, academia and government with full flexibility,” said Professor Ashutosh Sharma, DST Secretary at the recent launch of the ARTPARK.
“Generous additional support of the Government of Karnataka to the ARTPARK Hub brings extraordinary value in increasing its effectiveness, reach and use.
“It also sets a template of centre-state partnership in the frontier areas of technology– a theme which will receive focus in the soon to be released Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020,” he said.
Indian academia has been carrying out cutting edge technology research in various domains. “However, we have had systemic issues in moving the results of this research from university laboratories into the outside world. ARTPARK would go a long way in establishing a template for addressing this need,” Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, Director IISc pointed out.
“These moonshots will not only enable India but also build technology solutions for the 6 bn people in the developing world,” Umakant Soni, Co-founder & CEO noted.
Prof. Bharadwaj Amrutur, Research Head & Director ARTPARK explained how ARTPARK was a natural evolution of the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, interdisciplinary research and academic centre at IISc, with funding from the Bosch group of companies. #technology #startups #artificialintelligence #robotics #science /fiinews.com
