Artificial intelligence and IoT mark Bosch's strategic business development

The manufacturer invests 3.700 million euros annually in software development and will train 20.000 workers in this technology in the next two years.

“Bosch It also aims to become a leader in innovation in the field of artificial intelligence (IA)”, Michael Bolle has assured, member of the Board of Directors of this company (in the image below), during his participation in CES 2020 in las vegas, where it has shown intelligent products for different applications that integrate this technology.

Taking into account the latest studies on the matter, which predict the global market volume for AI applications to be around 120.000 million dollars in the short term, twelve times more compared to 2018, Bolle pointed out that “from 2025, All Bosch products will contain artificial intelligence or will have been developed or manufactured with the help of it..

Bosch wants to take advantage of that potential, since it currently invests 3.700 million euros annually in software development, employs more than 30.000 software engineers and has 1.000 employees working on artificial intelligence, figure that aims to quadruple within the year 2021.

Besides, has established a comprehensive training program: “We plan to convert almost 20.000 workers in experts in artificial intelligence in the next two years -Bolle pointed out-. We must invest not only in artificial intelligence, but also in human intelligence”.

This program includes training formats at three different levels for directors, AI engineers and developers, and includes guidelines for using artificial intelligence responsibly, through a set of principles that address safety and ethics issues.

In the future, Bosch points out that a key area of ​​​​artificial intelligence experience will be industrial application. “We want to take advantage of their potential not with the aim of creating models of human behavior, but to improve technology for the benefit of people -adds the manager-. For this reason, Industrial AI must be secure, robust and controlled, whether in manufacturing, at home or on the street.

To this end, the company has competence centers around the world and is currently investing 100 million euros in the construction of a new AI campus in Tübingen (Germany).

The move to this new research complex is scheduled for the end of 2022, in which it will offer a space for creative and productive exchange to some seven hundred AI experts, both Bosch, as well as from external startups and public research institutes.

One objective of this campus is to strengthen the exchange between experts in 'Cyber ​​Valley', a joint research company created in 2016, of Bosch is a founding member, bringing together industry partners, academia and government to boost AI research and transfer results to industrial market applications.

The Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) operates in seven locations around the world, two of them in the US - in Sunnyvale (California) y Pittsburgh, (Pennsylvania), and currently has 250 specialists in this technology who work in more than 150 projects in the fields of mobility, manufacturing, smart home and agriculture.