As part of a program, which supports municipalities that are particularly affected by the coal phase-out and want to implement future-oriented projects for structural change, the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence Duisburg (ZaKI.D) will receive 18 million euros in funding.

Paul Höller, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented the funding notifications to Michael Rüscher, Head of Economic Affairs of the City of Duisburg, and the ZaKI.D project partners consisting of the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS, the University of Duisburg-Essen and KROHNE.

Around 17 million euros of this funding comes from the federal STARK program (strengthening transformation dynamics in the former coal mining regions), while the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia is supplementing the funding with around 800,000 euros.

ZaKI.D focuses on the implementation of artificial intelligence on extremely resource-constrained devices such as sensors or other smart devices. This makes it possible to circumvent data protection problems and offer new services directly with the product or in a machine, with the intelligence residing in the device itself. The aim is to help small and medium-sized companies in the region to integrate artificial intelligence into their operations and products. Around 30 project-related and up to 500 external skilled jobs are to be created in Duisburg over the course of the project.