Press releases

A sustainable society with climate-neutral processes requires significant adjustments in the value chains, which are only possible through innovations. Seven Fraunhofer Institutes are pooling their expertise in the lighthouse project "Waste4Future" to develop new solutions for this goal, from the raw material base to material flows and process engineering right to the end of a product's life cycle. In particular, they want to increase energy and resource efficiency in the use of plastics and thus pave the way for a chemical industry that requires fewer fossil raw materials and produces fewer emissions

How can automotive production remain competitive in times of ever greater diversity of variants and ever faster product cycles? The new study "At the end of the line - How automakers can embrace flexible production" sees the solution, at least for the premium segment, in intelligently networked, self-organizing production. This means rethinking the pearl chain principle established today. The effort could pay for itself within a very short time, as the study authors from Strategy& Deutschland, the strategy consultancy of PwC, and the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB write.

Service robots can help ensure that buildings and means of transport are cleaned and disinfected regularly and with consistently high quality. Since October 2020, twelve institutions of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have been working on the development of new technologies for this field of application. Led by Fraunhofer IPA, the partners are pooling their expertise in the “Mobile Disinfection" (MobDi) research project to contribute to a safe “New Normal” in times of pandemic. The project is part of the »Fraunhofer vs. Corona« action program.

Germany holds the EU Council Presidency until the end of December. In an ambitious program, Germany has set itself the goal of addressing the issues of climate change and the protection of cultural heritage, among others. However, there is still a lack of reliable data and scientific studies on how and, above all, which future extreme weather events will affect our cultural heritage in the various regions of Germany and what measures we can take to protect our cultural heritage. Over the next three years, researchers will investigate this for the first time for Germany in the BMBF-funded project »KERES«. The research project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg together with the Fraunhofer EU Office in Brussels.

A new research group of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is developing underwater applications at the Baltic Sea for a more compatible use of the seas by humans. In a first project, the researchers are devoting themselves to the topic of microplastics in the oceans.

The use of machine learning (ML) in industrial production holds great potential for the optimization of procedures and processes. Due to various difficulties in this context, it is still far from being a standard tool. In order to overcome these challenges and make the use of ML in production less complex and more manageable, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a generally applicable process model as part of the lead project "ML4P - Machine Learning for Production", which was launched in 2018. While work on the associated software tools is still ongoing, the process model will be published on the occasion of the virtual trade fair "Fraunhofer Solution Days" on October 26 and will then be freely available as a white paper.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be found in smartphones, search machines, or navigation systems. It makes everyday life easier. Potential applications of AI in the engineering sector are numerous, examples being smart factories or autonomous vehicles. However, processes to make the behavior of these systems plannable and their decisions reproducible are still lacking. This will be changed by the "Kompetenzzentrum für KI-Engineering" (CC-KING, competence center for AI engineering) managed by the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB). The partners are Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology.