The fast-changing customer demands in modern society seek flexibility, innovation and a rapid response from manufacturers and organisations that, in order to respond to market needs, are creating tools and processes in order to adopt an approach that welcomes change. That approach is found to be Agile Manufacturing – and the Trinity project is the magnet that connects every segment of agile with everyone involved, creating a network that supports people, organisations, production and processes. The main objective of TRINITY is to create a network of multidisciplinary and synergistic local digital innovation hubs (DIHs) composed of research centres, companies, and university groups that cover a wide range of topics that can contribute to agile production: advanced robotics as the driving force and digital tools, data privacy and cyber security technologies to support the introduction of advanced robotic systems in the production processes. The Trinity project is funded by Horizon 2020 the European Union research and innovation programme. Currently, Trinity brings together a network of 16 Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) and so far has 37 funded projects with 8.1 million euros in funding.

Airbus and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at ILA Berlin 2022 to open a center of excellence for cybersecurity and trustworthy artificial intelligence in Saarland, Germany. The "CISPA-Airbus Digital Innovation Hub" will be located at the CISPA Innovation Campus in St. Ingbert and will start operations this year with the intention to grow to around 100 experts within the next three years. In the long term, Airbus and the CISPA are jointly aiming to grow the competence center to more than 500 experts. "Joining efforts with a renowned German research institution like CISPA is a key step in our strategy to continue strengthening our top-notch cybersecurity capabilities and expertise. At Airbus we are firmly committed to continue investing in the technologies and resources of the present and the future, which will enable us to be at the forefront of tomorrow's challenges, ever more digital. To achieve this ambition we are carefully selecting the right partners, and the creation of this competence center is a great example of our long-term vision and investment in innovation", said Evert Dudok, Executive Vice President Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space.

The Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) Industry represents a large economic activity spanning across multiple sectors such as energy, oil & gas, water supply, transport, civil engineering, and infrastructure. RIMA project aims at bringing together Digital Innovation Hubs and Facilitators operating under a common network that allow them to join forces and competences in promoting I&M robotics in Europe. The BIS Research projects' analysis of the Inspection and Maintenance Robot Industry forecasts that the I&M market will grow at a significant CAGR of 12.73% on the basis of value from 2020 to 2025. In 2019, Europe dominated the 40% of the global inspection and maintenance robot market (BIS322A, Mar 2020). Although the European Union hosts most of the I&M robotics offer – being France, Germany, and Spain (and U.K. until 2021 Brexit) the leading manufacturing countries, there is still a bottleneck connecting this offer to the market and high potential applications.

Robotics4EU is a 3-years-long EU-funded project which advocates for the wider adoption of AI-based robots in 4 sectors: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production. Thus, one of the ways in which Robotics4EU raises awareness about non-technological aspects in robotics is delivering a series of workshops to involve the research community, industry representatives and citizens. Role of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) in I&M Robotics" which took place on the 23rd of February, 2022 analysed the role and contribution of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) to the widespread adoption of robotics in society. How can they enhance the implementation of robotics by SMEs and startups into their daily operations? How can they help to close the knowledge gap of non-technological issues of robotics in Inspection & Maintenance (I&M)? These questions were analysed by five experts: Ebert von Vonderen, Ladislav Vargovcik, Maria Roca, Roi Rodriguez de Bernardo and ...

In the Czech Republic, the initial network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) in 2016 was very small – it included only two pioneer hubs raised from Horizon 2020 European projects focused on support of digital manufacturing (DIGIMAT located in Kuřim was the first one) and high-performance computing (the National Supercomputing Centre IT4Innovations located in Ostrava was the first DIH registered in CZ). Since then, the Czech network has enlarged up to twelve DIHs and their specialisation varies from manufacturing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotics, high-performance computing up to sectoral focus such as agriculture and food industry, health or smart cities and smart regions development. How are the Czech DIHs built and structured? They are based often on a leading competence centre, research organisation, technical university, science park, technology centre or the most active innovations-supporting NGOs who have created an efficient consortium of other partners around them, always following the selected field of specialisation. The DIHs in Czechia, as well as all over the Europe, have not been built "on a green meadow" – as we say in Czech, but based on a record of projects, activities and common references that have created the optimal mixture of the DIH s expertise and capacities.

On the 27th of January, DIHNET revealed the winners of the 2020 DIH Champions Challenge at the virtual EDIH Conference 2021 "Gearing up towards European Digital Innovation Hubs". The awards ceremony gathered more than 1176 participants including Digital Innovation Hubs, designated EDIHs, regions and Member States, representatives of EEN, Clusters, SME associations, among other stakeholders. DIHNET.EU was pioneer in launching the annual DIH Champions Challenge for identifying mature Digital Innovation Hubs in Europe. Begoña Sanchez, Innovation Systems and Policies manager at Tecnalia, and member of the DIHNET consortium, explains that the main purpose of this initiative is "to provide the DIHs community with a process for identifying good practices, showcase and support success stories of Mature DIHs that can inspire and guide other DIHs in their development." In this second edition, four DIHs were shortlisted as finalists: the am-LAB, the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH), the FZI Research Center for Information Technology and the ITI Data Hub (The Data Cycle Hub). The DIHNET consortium revised the proposals with the contribution of two external evaluators: Jan Kobliha, Ministerial Counsellor at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Thorsten Huelsmann, manager of the Digital Hub Logistics Dortmund, winner of the 2019 DIH Champions Challenge.

In February 2020, the European Commission (EC) published a white paper entitled, On Artificial Intelligence - A European approach to excellence and trust. This paper outlines the EC's policy options for the promotion and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the European Union. The Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) reviewed this paper and published a response addressing the EC's plans to build an "ecosystem of excellence" and an "ecosystem of trust," as well as the safety and liability implications of AI, the internet of things (IoT), and robotics. MAIEI provides 15 recommendations in relation to the sections outlined above, including: 1) focus efforts on the research and innovation community, member states, and the private sector; 2) create alignment between trading partners' policies and EU policies; 3) analyze the gaps in the ecosystem between theoretical frameworks and approaches to building trustworthy AI; 4) focus on coordination and policy alignment; 5) focus on mechanisms that promote private and secure sharing of data; 6) create a network of AI research excellence centres to strengthen the research and innovation community; 7) promote knowledge transfer and develop AI expertise through Digital Innovation Hubs; 8) add nuance to the discussion regarding the opacity of AI systems; 9) create a process for individuals to appeal an AI system's decision or output; 10) implement new rules and strengthen existing regulations; 11) ban the use of facial recognition technology; 12) hold all AI systems to similar standards and compulsory requirements; 13) ensure biometric identification systems fulfill the purpose for which they are implemented; 14) implement a voluntary labelling system for systems that are not considered high-risk; 15) appoint individuals to the oversight process who understand AI systems well and are able to communicate potential risks.

The majority of successful players in the automotive industry have transformed their business models over the past few years in response to the challenges of digitization. But while many are getting on track to digitize their core product offerings, the underlying business processes still show a high rate of manual work. Warranty handling is a prime example. Automotive manufacturers spend an estimated $50 billion on managing warranty claims each year1. In response to this and to accelerate digital transformation within key business processes of automotive manufacturers, MSX International (MSX) has joined forces with Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures (BCGDV).

Most may at the time of writing associate EU with Brexit since the United Kingdom is pulling out of the union. The European Union and their member countries does together have a population of approximately 500 million and about $22.0 trillion GDP which places EU as the 2nd largest economic force in the world. Therefore by some measures it is an important area to keep track of, and the international strategy for EU relating to AI may be of interest. By summarising some of these policies in a pragmatic way I hope you as a reader understand that this is no substitute for reading the documents, rather an attempt to bring together a few key points. What I provide is of course not a complete picture, rather small excerpts from an ongoing discussion. Looking at the EU strategy it can be hard to understand where to start.

A recent report by the OECD showed that Europe is only capitalising on a fraction (12%) of its digital potential. Most companies limit their digital use to email and internet. Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are particularly slow to integrate digital technologies. The recent Digital Economy and Society Index Report found that "Less than a fifth of companies in the EU-28 are highly digitised" and that "Use of robots is low on an EU level, with 6.7% of all enterprises using industrial or service robots. The share of large enterprises that use robots is four times higher than the share of SMEs."