Feed of press releases

* 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.

Robots should perform decontamination tasks as independently as possible in environments that are hostile to humans, e.g. in the remediation of contaminated sites or in the dismantling of nuclear facilities and the decontamination of power plant components – with the aim of allowing humans to stay out of the danger zone. This vision was at the beginning of ROBDEKON. Now, the first, four-year funding phase of the competence center has been completed and various systems waiting for their evaluation in the field have been developed. These systems are able to measure contamination, handle hazardous substances, or autonomously remove contaminated layers of soil.

Making production processes that are still immature quickly usable with the help of artificial intelligence: This is the goal of an alliance of researchers from KIT and Fraunhofer IOSB, which has now been granted extensive funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) within the framework of the strategic AI funding initiative. This will help to further combine the research fields of AI and engineering in the context of industrial production and to advance the scientific activity in the newly opened Karlsruhe Research Factory.