Feed of press releases

Karin Stein is the first woman in NATO history to receive the von Kármán Medal, the defense alliance's most prestigious scientific award. In an interview on the occasion of the award ceremony, the IOSB department head talks about how she came to physics and the responsibility she feels.

To mark the end of its three-year term, the KARLI joint project presented its results to around 150 participants from science, industry, politics, and the press. In KARLI, twelve research and industry partners developed AI applications for automated driving. The project focused on designing AI-controlled interaction between the vehicle and its users - for example, to combat motion sickness and help drivers behave in a way that matches the level of automation. Fraunhofer IOSB was responsible for the technical project management.

* Fraunhofer IOSB releases version 1.0 of the FA³ST Registry. The software provides a registry for digital twins based on the asset administration shell specification. The implementation for digital twins, FA³ST Service, has been updated to version 1.1.

* With FA³ST (Fraunhofer Advanced Asset Administration Shell Tools) you can create and manage digital twins for applications in the context of Industrie 4.0 in a matter of seconds.

* Like the FA³ST Service, the FA³ST Registry is free of charge, open source and, thanks to its open architecture, easy to expand and configure.

With the relaunch of the scientific department "Human-AI Interaction", the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB will focus explicitly on the interface between humans and technical systems based on artificial intelligence. With around 20 scientists under the leadership of Dr. Michael Voit, the department researches current trends and innovations in the field of human-machine interaction and AI assistants.

Optimizing communication between vehicle and driver as a function of the degree of automation is the objective of a research project conducted by Fraunhofer in collaboration with other companies. The researchers are combining sensors for monitoring the vehicle interior with language models to form what are known as vision language models. They are designed to increase the convenience and safety of cars in the future.

* Fraunhofer IOSB will establish the field of AI-based large-scale robotics in the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG), which has now been presented for the first time - this includes autonomous construction machines, agricultural robots and other heavy-duty machines that perform complex tasks independently. * Similar issues have so far been researched in particular at the Robotics Competence Center for Decontamination in Hazardous Environments (ROBDEKON). IOSB head of institute and ROBDEKON spokesperson Prof. Jürgen Beyerer presented the results of this work at the "AI-based Robotics" (KIRO) conference in Berlin on June 18. * The conference participants were also able to commission an autonomous excavator over 500 kilometers away to recover barrels live.

With the global population continuing to grow, food waste not only presents a resource problem but also carries a significant cost factor. Now, a new AI-supported multisensor application developed by the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Internet Technologies CCIT is being used to screen perishable goods such as fruit and vegetables. This technology carefully detects quality features even under the surface, making it possible to predict the shelf life of fruit and vegetables. It can be used on entire crates at the touch of a button — and customized with the addition of other sensors.

* Fraunhofer IOSB releases version 1.0 of the FA³ST service, an implementation for digital twins according to the Asset Administration Shell specification. * FA³ST (Fraunhofer Advanced Asset Administration Shell Tools) allows you to create digital twins for Industrie 4.0 applications in a matter of seconds. * FA³ST service is free of charge, open source and, thanks to its open architecture, easily expandable and configurable.

Whilst there is no doubt about its detrimental effects, corruption is a complex phenomenon that is hard to precisely grasp and measure. Thus, policy decisions are poorly informed, and technological tools to support the fight against corruption are lacking. The recently launched Horizon Europe project “Fight Against Large-scale Corruption and Organised Crime Networks (FALCON)” will tackle these challenges. To this end, 25 partner organisations from 15 countries join forces. The 3-year interdisciplinary project is funded by the European Union with 4.7 million Euros under Grant Agreement ID 101121281. It is being coordinated by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), Greece. The kick-off meeting was held September 20-21 in Athens (see photo).

What could a data space for Manufacturing-X look like in the future and what is important? The VDMA and ZVEI's blueprint study provides an impetus for this.

Surveying bodies of water precisely is a challenging task. Authorities and port operators are required to provide up-to-date maps of riverbeds and port facilities. Until now, this has required the use of special mapping vessels and a great deal of manpower. It is costly and is not being carried out with the frequency and precision that will be required for future applications, such as autonomous shipping. For this reason, a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB has developed an easy-to-operate, unmanned watercraft that autonomously surveys bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and harbors both above and below the surface and produces corresponding 3D maps.

Making aircraft more fuel-efficient is one of the aviation industry's most important goals. To this end, Lufthansa Technik uses AeroSHARK, a technology inspired by sharkskin, which significantly reduces frictional drag and thus emissions. To attach the coating optimally, however, it is necessary to conduct flow simulations which take the actual wing shape during flight into account. Measuring this is a challenge - and a specialty of the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB, as successful measurements flights by Lufthansa Technik have shown.

The digitalization of value chains is advancing very rapidly. For the automotive industry in particular, Catena-X and similar projects are creating new data ecosystems with the associated services, apps and connectors. Such data ecosystems only scale if many participants provide or use data. In this case, the focus is on SMEs as Germany's industrial backbone. To ensure that the transformation gains momentum along the entire supply chain and not just among OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, SMEs must be more closely involved. Transfer-X was especially launched for this purpose: Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action with around 8 million euros, the transfer project will create a web-based knowledge platform for easy-to-understand information and training materials - with the aim of motivating and empowering SMEs to participate in the digital transformation of value chains.

* Robots should remediate contaminated sites as autonomously as possible and support the dismantling of nuclear facilities as well as the recovery of hazardous materials: This is the objective of ROBDEKON, a competence center funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

* After four years of defining detailed use cases, researching technological principles, and developing demonstrators, the focus in phase II is now on transferring the results into practice and making the center permanent.

* Therefore, ROBDEKON is looking for partners for pilot projects – i. e. companies that want to offer and/or use autonomous decontamination technology.