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At the press conference held in Munich on May 4, 2022, the foundation of the Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) was officially announced. The network brings together leading companies, universities, and research institutions as well as municipalities and organizations with the aim of advancing the development of Urban Air Mobility. At the same time, the German and especially the Bavarian aviation industry is to be further strengthened.

As consortium leader of the Fraunhofer lead project ALBACOPTER^®, which is dedicated to the development of autonomously operating cargo drones, the Fraunhofer IVI with its locations in Dresden and Ingolstadt contributes numerous competences - from the design of innovative UAS to research into highly automated and autonomous flight functions. In the latter area in particular, the institute focuses on the three key areas of environmental sensing, trajectory planning and mission AI, which are expected to completely replace pilots in all tasks in the future.

Institute director Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner sees joining as a great opportunity: »The Air Mobility Initiative offers the opportunity to quickly share our innovative project ideas with the numerous partners and to jointly research the realization of tomorrow's urban mobility.«

• press release

In the immediate vicinity of Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, the »TELEWERK« a future-oriented real laboratory for innovation-based regional development with a total of 173 square meters of usable space on more than two floors and with workstations for 10 to 15 people will be built in the coming months on the premises of Werkbank 32.

The Fraunhofer IVI and the consortium leader Mittweida University of Applied Sciences bundle their research competences in a joint infrastructure and work together with the project partners Volksbank Mittweida eG, the innovation experts TeleskopEffekt GmbH Mittweida as well as the experts for sustainable construction with wood from Holzbau Lepski GmbH in Dresden. As part of the simul+ initiative, the Saxon State Ministry for Regional Development (SMR) is supporting the project. In addition to »TELEWERK«, the complex being built in Mittweida includes the research project »AMSEL –  self-sufficient micro-settlement for energy-conscious living«, which is also funded by the SMR.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner, head of the Fraunhofer IVI, thinks the constellation is a success: »It's simply fun to build a research infrastructure in Mittweida with such committed partners that impressively combines state-of-the-art technologies, appealing architecture and new forms of living and working.«

• press release (German)

In order to recognize potentially dangerous situations in road traffic as such, it is instructive to visualize the view of other road users and thus make it possible to experience them. As part of the »PAPS-XR« project, the Fraunhofer IVI is developing an immersive 3D system for accident prevention training. Actual accidents are recreated as high-resolution, detailed VR animations, which can then be recreated from the various perspectives of those directly involved or outsiders in a realistic yet safe manner. These accident simulations will initially be used at schools and driving schools in Saxony to raise awareness of typical, serious accident scenarios in order to avoid them in the future.

• to the article of InnoVisions (German)

Autonomous vehicles will soon be a natural part of the yard, says Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Wagner, group leader at the Fraunhofer IVI. In the future, trucks will independently transport cargo to the right ramp and swap bodies from A to B. In the AutoTruck project, Wagner, who has been working on the topic of »autonomous driving« since 2004, was involved in researching how vehicles can work independently in the yard. In an interview with logistics service provider Hermes Germany GmbH, he talks about the SAFE20 project, which is now adressing the major challenge of safety in connection with autonomous vehicles.

• to the interview (German)

During the opening event of GAIA-X's »Innovative and practical applications and data spaces in the Gaia-X digital ecosystem« funding competition, which was held on February 24 and 25, 2022, the 11 winning consortia were presented with their funding agreements. 130 consortia from science, industry and public bodies had applied with project sketches for all individual domains of the Gaia-X Hub Germany, as well as for cross-domain projects.

On behalf of the iECO consortium, Michael Brenner (RIB) and André Rauschert (Fraunhofer IVI) officially accepted the funding agreements from Dr. Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).

iECO aims at creating a shared data space based on GAIA-X for the construction industry, which is one of Germany's key industry sectors. A digital twin representing the entire life cycles of buildings hosted on the GAIA-X data infrastructure will help dissolve data silos currently existing in the construction sector. As a result, inefficiencies will be reduced and advanced services for further optimizing the entire construction process will be developed.

The consortium covers the construction sector's complete value creation chain through members representing construction expertise (Implenia Hochbau GmbH), work scheduling (RIB Information Technology AG), general planning (IPRO Consult), standardization (TU Dresden) and building operation (N+P Informationssysteme GmbH). Additional members contribute their knowledge on interdisciplinary topics such as GAIA-X expertise (Software AG), IoT knowledge (A1 Digital), legal compliance (Hochschule Hof), digital approval procedures (LGA Bavaria), smart contracts (IOTA Foundation) and data management/ AI expertise (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft).

On January 25, 2022, the »GAIA-X 4 Future Mobility« project family was kicked off in a virtual event.  Under the leadership of the DLR Institute for AI Safety and Security, 80 partners from science and industry are currently carrying out basic research within five projects in the fields of intelligent traffic infrastructure systems, vehicle technology design and industrial applications.

Within the scope of the new project family, and together with the Fraunhofer Institutes IPK, FIT and ISST, Fraunhofer IVI is actively involved in creating the future Gaia-X data ecosystem on the basis of different use cases for automated and networked mobility services. The institute contributes its expertise as well as technologies from the Mobility Data Space and for connected automated mobility to the upcoming Gaia-X projects. Based on the aforementioned use cases, they will develop new services and subsystems for operation in the emerging Gaia-X data spaces.

Within »GAIA-X 4 AMS – Advanced Mobility Services«, the Fraunhofer IVI researchers work on fundamentals for the Gaia-X basic architecture and reference services. In addition, they design and develop data apps for monitoring the operational design domains of automated mobility services and for supporting self-driving vehicles through technical supervision in special situations, such as vacating emergency lanes.

Within »GAIA-X 4 ROMS – Support and Remote Operation of Automated and Networked Mobility Services«, the institute is involved primarily in the design and development of Gaia-X services for the remote operation of driverless mobility solutions in public transport.

Within »Gaia-X 4 PLC-AAD – Product Life Cycle - Across Automated Driving«, Fraunhofer IVI gives support for the development, testing and operation of automated driving functions and their interaction with their digital twins by creating Gaia-X services for the integration and variable linking of scenario catalogs, high-precision digital maps, as well as simulation and real-life data.

• press release (German)

Since 2019, Fraunhofer IVI and Saxony´s police administration office (Polizeiverwaltungsamt, PVA) have been developing an innovative messenger service – MePol – for daily use in police operations. MePol is a comprehensive communication technology for the secure transfer of data-protected police information. Research and development are carried out in direct cooperation with users, so that the technology could be transferred into practice at an early stage.

The key functionalities include, among others: exchange of mission-specific messages, storage area for digital mission documents, intelligent algorithms for the optimal allocation of forces and resources, role and rights management. The complex technology is flexible and contains numerous networked components such as servers, end devices and mobile apps.

Several thousand police officers in Saxony already use MePol in their daily routine work, as well as in large-scale operations. Acceptance is very high, and the technology has become indispensable for its end-users. At the same time, MePol is improved continuously based on the experience and operational requirements of police officers. This year's transfer to the newly established Saxon police cloud marks another important step.

MePol has already aroused interest nationwide. The goal of Saxony’s police is to establish the system as a standard all across Germany.

article in the Fraunhofer-Magazine

Connected in rural and urban areas

»Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner, head of Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, is a mastermind of networking. At the institute, he and more than 100 researchers are tinkering with fast charging systems for e-cars, among other things, and developing a drone to test urban air mobility. In an interview with our moderator Stephan Bischof, Prof. Dr. Matthias Klingner explains what sustainable mobility could look like in rural areas and why development there could progress even faster than in cities.«

podcast episode (German)