Press releases and news

Eight Fraunhofer Institutes have developed new solutions for waste management and the circular economy of plastics in the lighthouse project "Waste4Future". With their expertise, they are improving aspects such as recycling, sorting, recipe development, utilization paths and the minimization of waste streams. In particular, this makes it possible to use waste containing plastic that was previously incinerated. The results have now been presented to industry representatives at a final meeting.

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.