“Artificial Intelligence” (AI) is a strategic focus topic of inpro. In current projects, its potential is being transferred to various trades of automobile production. In addition to ongoing project work with a focus on short and medium-term implementation, inpro also monitors worldwide research and competition activities in the relevant technology fields.

The USA is traditionally known as a nation with a strong research tradition. One indicator of this is the scientific publication activity in which the USA has been leading for decades. However, the tide has turned in the area of artificial intelligence research since 2014. While the US generates roughly constant output in terms of publication activity in the field of AI research, the publication activity of Chinese researchers is growing exponentially and by 2019 already accounts for about one third of the total number of publications of the research-strong nations under review. However, it must be noted that China is not yet able to keep up with the USA in terms of quality measured by the citation frequency of published works. The USA is still the leader here. However, China is catching up here as well, as can be seen from the citation frequency.

This development is fired above all by government support programs in the field of artificial intelligence, which have been massively initiated since 2015 and are geared towards medium and long-term action plans. AI research and development also plays an important role in the area of industrial manufacturing, which is particularly evident in the patenting activities in the field of „Smart Robotics“ and „Intelligent Manufacturing“.