IIC develops artificial intelligence testing program for factories

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. “It enables buyers to be flexible with their demands by expressing their procurement requirements within a range and sellers can expand opportunities for orders and profits by making full use of their assets.

“In a logistics use case, automatic negotiation can facilitate on-demand shared transport services. This can help factories minimize their transport systems in situations when logistics costs are high and redundant traffic will increase the total vehicle traffic.”

Each company that makes or receives an order is provided with a negotiation AI agent through the IIC Negotiation Automation Platform. The AI agent searches for terms and conditions that can be agreed upon by both parties by using standardized protocols, data formats and lexical definitions. If both parties agree, it will be understood to be contracted automatically. Even if agreed, the final contract will be carried out by human users.

Testers needed
The IIC is calling for participants from both members or non-members, such as manufacturing facilities, related supply chain entities, transportation and logistics providers, to conduct connection experiments using these standards and APIs.

Learn more about the IIC Negotiation Automation Platform Testbed.