Darmstadt, 25 April 2024

The Horizon Europe project COGNIMAN, which aims at smart and flexible manufacturing integrating key technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin and collaborative robotics, established its Ethics Board to oversee the development and deployment of its solutions.

The Ethics Board consists of four people from organisations outside of the project. The diverse expertise of the board members provides the project with a broad perspective on ethical considerations in AI and automation technologies. The board’s mission is to ensure COGNIMAN’s solutions respect fundamental human rights, focusing on reliability, privacy, data governance, diversity, non-discrimination and accountability. It aims to address potential negative impacts on society and the environment, reinforcing COGNIMAN’s dedication to responsible technology use.

Together with DeepBlue, which internally oversees the COGNIMAN solutions from an ethical standpoint, the Ethics Board will serve as an independent auditor for the project.

Debora Zanatto, Human Factors Lead Consultant at DeepBlue, Italy, emphasised the importance of external oversight, stating, “It’s good to have the board review our findings from the external point of view.”

The Ethics Board brings together a group of professionals from academia and industry: Sabine T. Köszegi of TU Wien, Austria; Giuseppe Contissa from the European University Institute, Italy; Pamela Krzypkowska from Microsoft, Poland; and Roger von Laufenberg from the Vienna Centre for Societal Security, Austria.
Inaugural Ethics Board meeting in March

The Ethics Board met the project partners for the first time at the end of March in a kick-off meeting in which the project was introduced to them in detail. After this, they will meet regularly to stay involved in the project’s development and implementation phases and ensure a consistent ethical approach.

About COGNIMAN

Manufacturing processes like glass fibre production, precision machining, additive manufacturing and high-temperature metal production are difficult to automate: Tasks are complex and cannot be fully controlled. The EU project COGNIMAN aims to solve this and make manufacturers more productive, efficient, flexible and sustainable. Sixteen partners from six countries develop a novel concept of “digital cognitive smart manufacturing”. COGNIMAN stands for “COGNitive Industries for smart MANufacturing“.

Solving four concrete use cases on the way, the project’s outcome will be human-centric modular toolboxes that can be adapted to substitute a range of manual manufacturing processes. The toolboxes will integrate key technologies such as simulations, digital twins, advanced sensors, machine learning toolbox and cognitive robotics.

The ultimate objective is to boost the competitiveness of the European technology and manufacturing sectors towards industrial leadership in global markets while reducing the environmental footprint of manufacturing activities.

Project partners: NORCE Norwegian Research Center AS (Norway), Instituto Technologico de Aragon (Spain), IDEKO Coop (Spain), SINTEF AS (Norway), DeepBlue SBL (Italy), GOIMEK S Coop (Spain), Aldakin SL (Spain), Croom Precision Tooling Ltd (Ireland), Montimage EURL (France), EYDE Klyngen (Norway), Institut de Recherche Technologique Jules Verne (France), EIT Manufacturing Central GgmbH (Germany), Acciaierie Bertoli Safau SPA (Italy), IBM Ireland Ltd (Ireland), 3B-Fibreglass Norway AS (Norway), 3B-Fibreglass (Belgium)

EIT Manufacturing Central gGmbH

Co-funded by the European Union

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101058477.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Source: EIT Manufacturing Central gGmbH