Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization and Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš presented the Czech Digital Week program to journalists at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of CTU in Prague (CIIRC CTU). The Czech Digital Week takes place from Monday, October 31 to Sunday, November 6, 2022. Each day of the week is marked by a specific technological theme. The first was digital education. That is why the series of conferences and seminars quite logically started at CIIRC CTU.
Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Bartoš also started Czech Digital Week with a presentation of the priorities of the Czech Presidency in the Council of the EU in the area of the digital agenda and the current status of their implementation. He and the journalists then had the opportunity to view the unique research infrastructure and selected technologies offered by the so-called Testbed for Industry 4.0, built at CIIRC CTU as part of the Czech-German Research and Innovation Center on Advanced Industrial Production (RICAIP), thanks to EU and Czech investments. The program also included the presentation of new strategic projects that are being developed at the CIIRC of CTU – specifically COMENIA. The participation of the rector of VŠB-TUO prof. Václav Snášel, who, in the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister, signed the agreement on accession to this project.
„Today’s opening in the premises of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics is more than symbolic. It’s a place where theory becomes practice,“ comments Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Bartoš on the start of Czech Digital Week, adding: „I am pleased that, through the Testbed for Industry 4.0, access to current scientific knowledge and tools for advanced production is being opened up to Czech industry. Connecting scientific and industrial spheres I consider a condition for building a successful innovation ecosystem.“
„CIIRC, as a top research facility, ensures an ideal intersection between science and industry on a Czech and European scale. This is done precisely through education in the field of digitization and digital technologies. We offer this not only to students, but also to company employees,“ confirms Ondřej Velek, director of CIIRC ČVUT.
„We are very happy that here at our institute we were able to present to the Deputy Prime Minister the infrastructure built as part of the RICAIP project and other projects and to offer it for the transformation of Czech industrial production towards green production,“ emphasizes Prof. Vladimír Mařík, scientific director of CIIRC CTU, and continues: „We also opened up the topic of the importance of energy savings in industrial production. Digitization is the first step in this process. This must be followed by the projection of digitization into work with matter, i.e. into industrial production. Only then will it be possible to achieve real savings so that green production is not just a theory. These are the topics we are interested in and developing at CIIRC. We are using artificial intelligence and other technologies such as 5G networks, 3D printing and additive manufacturing to help us. All of this is concentrated and intertwined with the perspective of industrial use precisely in our Testbed for Industry 4.0.“
An example of the use of this potential is the COMENIA strategic project, which aims to build a backbone European Cloud & Edge infrastructure to ensure a new generation of data services based on artificial intelligence. It will enable robust real-time processing of industrial data and provision of Cloud-to-Edge services to support industrial innovation. All this new for ecological and socially responsible production. The part of the project with a total investment of EUR 129.94 million (CZK 3.3 billion) involves the spin-off company CTU, TRIX Connections, CIIRC CTU and recently also the VŠB-TUO. In accordance with the Program Statement of the Government of the Czech Republic, the COMENIA project was submitted for notification by the European Commission as a strategic project of the Czech Republic within the so-called IPCEI-CIS program (Important Project of Common European Interest-Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services). If successful, the Czech Republic will become one of the global leaders in the emerging integration industry, the need for which is growing rapidly with new technologies.
Photo: CIIRC CTU
