What makes the Volkswagen Machine Learning Research Lab different from other research institutions? Creating technologies that really work - not just creating methodologies that show it could work and publishing. Robotics literature has solutions but it always has some problems - solving them so that it can be applied is what is sustainable. “Our general technologies evolve around predicting the future and using those predictions to make optimal decisions. At the moment I know what's going to happen in the next 10 steps, or 100 steps, and I can not only predict the state of my system but actually predict what my sensors are going to see. I can use that to react to unforeseen changes in my environment.”Patrick’s project 10toGo: “We have 10 more years to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It’s not much time, so we must act now. In fact the UN has named the next 10 years the #decadeofaction. 10toGO, brought to you by Volkswagen Group and Microsoft, is our first joint step of action: a kick-starting platform for sustainable, data-driven innovation.”Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich, focussing on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning. Besides publishing numerous papers and patents on machine learning, robotics, and motor control, he has won a number of awards, including the 2013 Helmholtz-Association Erwin Schrödinger Award, the 2014 King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, the 2013 Harvard Medical School/MGH Martin Research Prize, the 2018 Webit Best Implementation of AI Award, and best-paper awards at machine learning and robotics conferences and journals. In 2018, he started a for-good initiative "10toGO" by supporting teams using machine learning for the UN SDGs. Also then, he initiated etami, an initiative on Ethical and Trustworthy Artificial and Machine Intelligence, creating an organisation with almost 20 multinationals and universities.GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.www.globari.org@LinkedIn @GARInstitute) / Twitter