The centre, which is funded by Innovation Fund Denmark, is a collaboration between the computer science departments at the eight Danish universities and the Alexandra Institute. In total, we have initiated projects worth DKK 115 million, of which DKK 31.7 million is funded by DIREC. Other projects focus on how to control and program multiple robots simultaneously, how to secure IoT devices, how to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in hospitals and how to support artificial intelligence on very small devices, such as smart thermostats, windows and garage doors.

The power of these projects is that they are carried out across university and industry boundaries, Thomas Riisgaard Hansen, director of DIREC explains:

“The most innovative solutions always emerge from cross-disciplinary collaboration. It may be across universities, academic disciplines and across research and industry. Thus, it is a requirement for the projects we launch that they include several partners with different competences”.

The research and innovations projects are:

EXPLAIN-ME: Learning to collaborate via explainable AI in medical education

HERD: Human-AI collaboration: Engaging and controlling swarms of robots and drones

REWORK: The futures of hybrid work

Embedded AI

SIOT: Secure Internet of Things – Risk analysis in design and operation