2024

After three years of research, Fraunhofer IVI and TU Dresden successfully completed their project “KIWA: artificial intelligence for flood warning”. The project partners met in Dresden to look back at their achievements and discuss the future of the new technology.

The project was opened by Fraunhofer IVI Director Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner together with the project manager Prof. Dr. Niels Schütze from TU Dresden and Anna Guerrero Lara from the project sponsor VDI Technologiezentrum. The opening was followed by exciting presentations on the different application areas of AI within water monitoring, and a discussion moderated by project coordinator Jens Grundmann.

On-site live demonstrations made the pioneering technology tangible for the participants. The MOBITKAT^®-system, developed at Fraunhofer IVI, had a guest appearance, demonstrating how the new methods can be implemented in established systems.

The event was rounded off with workshops focusing on user needs in the fields of disaster protection, water defense, flood control and environmental monitoring, as well as keynote speeches on future application areas.

The project started in April 2021 and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the goal of creating AI tools to assist flood warning and monitoring. The artificial intelligence is now able to improve precipitation-runoff simulations, automatically detect water levels from camera images and derive the flow volumes of river systems from them.

On March 14, Fraunhofer IVI participated in the final presentation of the SAFE20 project, funded by the BMWK (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action) and thereby had the chance to demonstrate the strengths of their software framework helyOS^®, which is used for building control tower systems.

The eight consortium partners presented a realistic test operation including three autonomous logistics vehicles on the Dachser depot in Langenau, Baden-Württemberg. Those vehicles are able to integrate themselves smoothly into a mixed operation of manually controlled vehicles and walking staff.

Thanks to helyOS^®, the three test vehicles were successfully connected and it was possible to connect new planning services in order to create a reliable and optimally coordinated organization of all driving tasks.

The goal of this project was the development and first realization of a holistic safety concept, which, as the first of its kind, can allow driving speeds of autonomous vehicles of over 20 km/h on depots, while cooperating with conventional vehicles. This safety concept is a basic requirement for future regular operation und economic success of autonomous commercial vehicles. Driving speeds have so far been limited to only 8 km/h, which is too low to be considered productive. The SAFE20 developments could provide a solution for the ongoing lack of drivers.

The project, initiated in October of 2020, can now be considered completed successfully, thanks to the great cooperation with the technology group ZF as the consortium leader, as well as the companies Dachser, Götting KG, TII KAMAG, Sensor-Technik Wiedemann GmbH, SICK AG and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML.

read the Press release (in German) 

Exactly one year after its launch, the ”DesignLab for Applied Research“ – a cooperation between Fraunhofer and TU Dresden – had the opportunity to engage in an interesting dialogue with visitors from society, economy, industry and politics at the ”SPIN2030 Science Festival“. For this event, more than 50 scientific institutions from all over Saxony took over the five-storey building of the Museum of Science and Technology Dresden with the aim of making science tangible. The science festival is a part of the campaign ”SPIN 2030. Science State Saxony“, organized by the Saxon Ministry of Science, with the goal of highlighting the diversity, excellence, and attractiveness of Saxony as a research location.

The project team presented concepts and current developments in tomorrow´s agriculture, mobility and architecture and showed potentials of the integration of industrial designers in research projects.

Especially the vivid presentation of the projects Feldschwarm^® and ALBACOPTER^® sparked excitement and interest across all age groups and encouraged lively discussions about future solutions in automation on land and under water. 

From January 30th to February 1st, the project MOBILITIES FOR EU kicked off to a great start. 29 partners from nine European countries are collaborating to create innovative mobility concepts within the next five years. This will help to achieve the European Green Deal aims for 2030.

The EU-funded project will pursue a holistic and user-centered approach to successfully create climate-neutral and smart cities. Therefore, passenger mobility and freight transport concepts will be implemented using cost-effective and feasible solutions. Dresden and Madrid will act as lead cities and get the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of 27 innovative mobility solutions. These will be realized in eleven pilot projects, including vehicles as well as overarching infrastructure. Electrification, automation, and connectivity will be central topics of the project.

Fraunhofer IVI will provide assistance in the fields of C-ITS, Mobility Data Space and infrastructure assistance for CCAM. Moris Zahtila represented the departments of “Cognitive and Cooperating Systems” and “Mobility and Digital Services” at the kick-off in Madrid. 

Within IN²Lab, a project with a duration of 3.5 years, the »First Mile« test field was established at Lake Auwaldsee in Ingolstadt, and a security system for automated driving functions was developed. The final event on January 24 in Ingolstadt clearly highlighted that the test field has enriched the mobility region with an open, urban development, and demonstration platform for 5G-based mobility applications.

Under the coordination of THI, project partners Fraunhofer IVI (with its application center in Ingolstadt), Audi, Blickfeld, and Continental developed essential components of the security system. These include infrastructure-side sensors for environmental perception, Car2X communication for the interconnection of vehicles and infrastructure, as well as a Mission Control backend for monitoring and control. Fraunhofer IVI, in collaboration with THI, is a key partner in the test field and has significantly contributed to its conception, architecture, and specification. Additionally, the institute supports the expansion of the test field with further Roadside Units in the 5GoIng project, as well as its evolution into an open innovation lab.

IN²Lab was funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy as part of the Bayern Digital II initiative.

• read the THI press release (in German)
• more information on the IN²Lab project