The private museum of Takara Tomy, the Japanese toy company responsible for Transformers, Beyblade, and Zoids, is filled with playthings from Christmases past. In a lovingly curated room in the company's Tokyo headquarters, a miniature B-29 bomber, faintly flecked with rust, sits at the ready in a glass display case. A squad of Micronauts action figures seems to have warped in from the seventies. An R2-D2-esque Omnibot, the remote-controlled robot that I begged my parents to buy in 1985, looks ready to roll. In the near future, these toys are likely to be joined by a very different sort of gadget: a small, spherical moon rover named SORA-Q, which Takara Tomy designed for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.

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.

Scale AI, Canada's artificial intelligence (AI) cluster, has announced it is investing $24 million to support five AI projects in supply chain operations. The federally and Québec government-supported AI cluster is also partnering with MaRS to support the commercialization of 12 Canadian supply chain solutions AI startups. A number of startups and partners are sharing in the $24 million investment. AlayaCare, CIUSSS du Nord-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Bien Chez Soi, Polytechnique Montréal, for example, are receiving $800,000 to use AI to optimize care worker resources, using data to streamline the organization of shifts by geographic area, schedules and skills. The largest investment of $3 million went to London Drugs Limited, Deloitte, TAP, Sanctuary AI, and Atlantia to develop an AI-powered supply chain model focused on forecasting supplier demand.

Over 5000 AI patents were filed in the last decade, over 60% in India. The key trends and challenges in the new artificial intelligence hub - India.

When it comes to innovations in AI, Tier-1 institutes such as IIT have been trying to leave no stone unturned. IITs have been performing a lot of research work in the field of emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, blockchain, among others. The institutes are also joining hands with the government and various other prominent organisations to launch the Centre of Excellence (CoE), Research & Development Centres (R&Ds), among others. In this list, we have curated the top AI initiatives, in no particular order, by IIT in the year 2020. In January, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has evolved an AI-aided method to read legal judgements.

Devastated by industrial crisis, America's former "steel city" has reinvented itself as an innovation hub. But today its main challenge is to keep its "One Pittsburgh" promise by ensuring that everybody in its diverse population shares the benefits of new growth. Pittsburgh is back from the brink. A flagship of triumphant industrialisation in the early 20th century, the city has since seen its steel mills decline and then shut down. As the economy lurched from one crisis to another, Pennsylvania's rusting "steel city" became an emblem of decline, like other urban "dead stars" in the rustbelt of America's Middle West. But Pittsburgh never gave up.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving most of the economies towards an innovative future. Several countries and cities have emerged as AI leaders to produce great tech talents and nurture the potentials of the technology. Big-scale investments by the governments, citizens' likeliness to adapt AI-centric lifestyle, well-educated and well-versed workforce, the contribution of significant world-class universities and low cost for business establishment are among some of the major catalyzers that make following cities a potential AI hub, to begin with, your startup. Here are some of the most advanced cities to explore your chances to be the next AI entrepreneur. Austin has been named under the best places to start a business in the US.

Across the world, investing in AI innovations is on a steep rise. Artificial intelligence (AI) is indeed opening up the newer phases of technological advancements. Last year, riding the AI wave, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), across the country, came up with several AI initiatives -- from rolling out courses to launching R&Ds centres and Center of Excellences in various parts of the country. Although we have just stepped in the year 2020, IITians have already started to make headlines with their newer innovations for the year. In fact, Google has recently decided to start six artificial intelligence-based research projects in India by providing funds and computational resources, where two of the prominent IITs have agreed to participate -- IIT Delhi and IIT Madras.

Accenture today opened a new Innovation Hub in Hyderabad, where clients can co-innovate with Accenture by ideating, rapidly prototyping and then scaling disruptive products and services for the digital economy. The latest addition to Accenture's global innovation network, the Hyderabad Innovation Hub is spread over 300,000 square feet where clients can co-innovate and co-create solutions with more than 2,000 Accenture professionals with expertise across multiple industries and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, security, extended reality, automation and blockchain. "Our research shows that organizations are struggling to achieve their innovation goals, due to the lack of an enterprise-wide strategy for technology investments and adoption," said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive, Accenture Technology Services. "Through our leading advanced technology capabilities, we help clients scale their technology investments and bridge the innovation achievement gap. Our Innovation Hub in Hyderabad has the pieces our clients require to accelerate value creation through enterprise-wide, game-changing innovation."

TCS in collaboration with Qualcomm has announced today the launch of Innovation Hub in Hyderabad, India. With 5G technology, users can experience low latency while dealing with cloud computing, highly responsive multiplayer gaming, immersive 360-degree video, and instant apps, etc. The 5G speed will make such tracking almost instantaneous. Such a tremendous amount of data can be gathered and directed at machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms delivering crucial insights to make intelligent decisions. Executive Opinion Global Head, Technology Business Unit, TCS, V Rajanna, said, "The convergence of 5G, AI and edge computing will open unprecedented opportunities for value creation in industrial automation, autonomous vehicles and other industries. The new Innovation Hub brings together TCS' and Qualcomm Technologies' world-class technology expertise to unlock the potential of transformational solutions in this emerging space to help global enterprises explore the art of the possible and accelerate their Business 4.0 journeys."