Initiated by the Union Education Ministry, the joint research and translation centre aims at building robust, scalable and human-centric AI systems for real-world manufacturing. “Many industry partners are in the process of joining this centre,” people in the know said.
The new centre aims to address all areas of manufacturing, including semiconductors, robotics, industrial manufacturing, process industries such as pharmaceuticals, food processing, refining and petrochemicals, construction and infrastructure development, as well as transport and logistics.
This will be the fifth AI centre to be initiated by the ministry after the Translational AI for Networked Universal Healthcare (TANUH) Foundation at IISc, the IIT Madras Bodhan AI Foundation (for education), and a centre each for sustainable cities and agriculture with IIT Kanpur and IIT Ropar, respectively.
Commenting on the development, IIT Bombay Director Prof Shireesh Kedare said that the partnership reflects its commitment to nation-building by positioning India as a global leader in AI-driven manufacturing innovation.
“By building open and interoperable industrial AI infrastructure, this initiative will support industry modernisation, empower MSMEs, nurture start-ups and develop future-ready talent,” he added.
Leveraging the complementary strengths of both institutes in various domains such as foundational AI, optimisation, manufacturing and process engineering, this centre will develop end-to-end, interoperable industrial AI infrastructure.
“This will address shop-floor realities such as legacy equipment, noisy data, real-time constraints and multilingual workforces,” IIT Bombay added.
Through close engagement with industry partners, officials said that the centre will deliver applied research, customised solutions, talent development and start-up translation, while releasing foundational datasets, models and interfaces as public goods to strengthen India’s varied manufacturing ecosystem, including MSMEs.
