August 22, 2019 – The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has launched a new testing project for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in factories and transportation companies. The Negotiation Automation Platform Testbed is open to both IIC members and non-members and uses a variety of AI infrastructure technologies, which automatically negotiate with each other, in order to find mutually agreeable contract terms. In the future, the testbed aims to promote standardization activities that support the growth of AI throughout society. The project is being led by NEC Corporation with support from Kabuku Inc., Fraunhofer IOSB and Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI). How the testbed works "In a manufacturing use case, automatic negotiation on conditions for the trading of products benefits both buyers and sellers," says Dr. Satoshi Morinaga, IIC Testbed lead and research fellow for NEC.