Art-Ie

The project 'Artificial Intelligence Inspiration' (Art-Ie) aims to strengthen the cross-border region of Flanders-Netherlands in the field of digital innovation, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It primarily seeks to bring together small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with knowledge institutions.

Digital innovation has become integral to our society and will only increase in importance. Although the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the trend of digitization in both Flanders and the Netherlands, there are still numerous challenges, especially for the many SMEs in West and East Flanders and Brabant. This project aims to strengthen the cross-border region of Flanders-Netherlands and, in particular, bring SMEs together with knowledge institutions. Central to this project are the Flemish and Dutch universities of applied sciences, which, with their expertise and state-of-the-art infrastructure, are well-placed to introduce companies to innovative digital technologies, especially their practice-oriented research in AI.

As a stepping stone to collaboration with universities, we aim to inspire SMEs in the field of innovative digital technologies and introduce them to our universities as seamlessly as possible, along with their expertise and infrastructure in innovative digital technologies in general and AI in particular. We will establish three cross-border AI labs, each with its specific expertise. We provide SMEs with the opportunity to actively collaborate with a university of applied sciences by addressing an innovation challenge in one of the cross-border labs. We focus on various aspects of AI with applications in different domains.