Polytech and Siemens Opened Joint Laboratory «Industrial Artificial Intelligence»

At the end of 2017 the Grand Opening of R&D Lab «Industrial Artificial Intelligence» took place in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Siemens LLC allocated about 21 million rubles for laboratory software and hardware that was integrated with Supercomputer Center «Polytechnic». The peak total computer performance of the complex reaches 2 petaflops that allows solving world-class problems.

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With help of Artificial Intelligence, new Lab will carry out monitoring and diagnostics of industrial systems and devices. The R&D results will be applied not only in high-tech industrial fields such as oil and gas industry, energy industry but also in the spheres of urban management and regional logistics systems that particularly attracts attention of the government authorities represented at the Grand Opening by Vice-Governor of Leningrad Region Oleg Koval and Chairman of the Committee on IT and Communications Denis Chamara. As a token of German-Russian cooperation support Pietro Merlo, head of the Department of Culture, Press, and Communications at the German Consulate General in St. Petersburg attended the ceremony. In addition, Grand Opening of the Lab was visited by the heads of regional enterprises, Siemens and SPbPU employees, media representatives.

At the Grand Opening Andrey Rudskoy, academician, rector of Polytechnic University noted the importance of today’s event: ‘We have taken a step towards the development and advancement of relationships with a world leader, a company that is ahead of many others in the sphere of innovations and introduction of new and advanced technologies’. As rector of SPbPU said Siemens is a ‘state within a state’ and ‘it is a pleasure for us to work with such an important partner’.

The history of the industrial development and St. Petersburg is closely connected with the company: the first office of Siemens in Russia was opened in 1853, only 5 years after Siemens foundation in Germany. Today Polytechnic University is a continuer of these traditions. University cooperates with Siemens since 1993, in 2008 the Strategic Cooperation Agreement on the full range of Siemens activities a was signed.

Vice-President of Siemens AG, President of Siemens in Russia Dietrich Moeller noted that the company together with Polytechnic University carries out ambitious IT development programme. ‘Digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence is the future. That is what new laboratory will deal with. The laboratory is equipped with supercomputer by which it is possible to discover solutions for oil and gas industry, machinery and urban infrastructure with greater speed, quality, and efficiency’, – underlined Dr. Moeller.

The laboratory’s specialized supercomputer, with a production capacity of about 1 petaflops, was designed to solve problems in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It is the only such system in Russia and is equipped with state-of-the-art computer technology. Supercomputers allow researchers to solve problems in the field of deep learning, which require hardware with a production capacity of one or more petaflops in multi-user mode. The new laboratory will focus on solving important problems using big data for the needs of Russian industry. With the help of artificial intelligence, the laboratory’s researchers will conduct monitoring and diagnostics of industrial systems and machines. The findings will be applied to the oil and gas industry, power generation and other high-technology areas in Russia as well as other countries.