The Ingolstadt “Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” (also referred to as AININ - Artificial Intelligence Network Ingolstadt) was jointly founded by seven partners from science and industry: the Technical University of Ingolstadt (THI), the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU), the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Audi AG, the MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group, the City of Ingolstadt and the Klinikum Ingolstadt hospital. The range of application areas is similarly broad, covering image and speech recognition, automated driving and optimized customer care as well as product-related early damage detection. The research center will conduct research into AI technology while giving consideration to the resulting social and ethical implications.

The center will accommodate twelve professorships and just as many positions for scientific staff. Five professorships are to be financed by the Free State of Bavaria, while the partners will finance the remaining positions for an initial period of five years. The research center is scheduled start operations as early as the second quarter of 2019. The center will initially be located on the TU’s premises, with the scientists later relocating to the planned brigk digital start-up center. The research center is also a member of the Bavarian Competence Network for Artificial Machine Intelligence .