Rückert's focus, though, is on more proactive AI applications that can make decisions on their own and control processes. Such AI agents, she believes, will give industry a boost comparable to the erstwhile advances triggered by smartphones and the internet. If a machine breaks down, the agent will check if the same problem has already been experienced in a different Bosch factory, examines handbooks and scans shift logs – before then proposing a possible solution within seconds. For more complex tasks, several agents can be combined, which then communicate with each other. Comprehensive use of such tools, says Rückert, can translate into millions in savings for individual factories.

An artificial intelligence algorithm can transform still images into a high-resolution, explorable 3D world, with potential implications for film effects and virtual reality. By feeding the neural network a selection of images of a scene and a rough 3D model of the scene created automatically using off-the-shelf software called COLMAP, it is able to accurately visualise what the scene would look like from any viewpoint. The neural network, developed by Darius Rückert and colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, is different to previous systems because it is able to extract physical properties from still images. "We can change the camera pose and therefore get a new view of the object," he says. The system could technically create an explorable 3D world from just two images, but it wouldn't be very accurate.

Sami Haddadin runs a'robot kindergarten' where intelligent machines learn from each other.Credit: Technical University of Munich "AI and robotics development pull us right into the heart of what it is to be human," says Sami Haddadin, founding director of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MSRM) at TUM. "We're not looking to usher in an'age of automatons'. Rather, we hope to enable a smooth transition to an age of human- machine interaction." MSRM's research agenda covers the understanding of humans in order to develop intelligent machines that can, in turn, help humans. Haddadin gives an example: give a young child a key and, within around 20 tries, they can unlock a door. A child's intuitive ability to manipulate a tool is one aspect, but they also watch and learn from adults.

Prof. Daniel Rückert has developed trailblazing computational techniques that generate highly informative images from CT and MRI scans, analyze them, and interpret them for improved medical diagnostics. TUM has now succeeded in recruiting this expert in AI-based medicine. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation will support his research with one of the prestigious Humboldt Professorships, which comes with a 5 million euro endowment. With these awards, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is pursuing the goal of attracting leading international scientists to Germany on a long-term basis. In May, Federal Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek announced the goal of creating additional AI-related chairs.