From Research to Application: Projects at Fraunhofer EMFT

Every year, over 3 million immobile people worldwide suffer from severe, mostly preventable pressure ulcers, with around 0.6 million in Germany. Pressure ulcers not only cause personal suffering but are also time-consuming and costly to treat. Current prophylaxis methods require significant commitment from nursing staff and do not provide continuous security. Therefore, there is an urgent need for individual and continuous monitoring for effective pressure ulcer prophylaxis. SoreAlert, a potential spin-off from Fraunhofer EMFT, addresses this need with a smart patch that allows for automated monitoring of at-risk body areas and provides early warnings for pressure ulcers.

The aim of predictive maintenance is to maintain operating resources proactively and with foresight. This should reduce downtime and maintenance costs to a minimum. Researchers at Fraunhofer EMFT are testing new concepts that use machine learning methods to efficiently process even extremely heterogeneous data and make accurate maintenance predictions for production facilities.

Whether in automobiles – especially in the context of autonomous driving – or future industrial manufacturing: plugs and electrical connection technologies have a key role to play in digital networking. They are the main interface between machines, control units and data processing systems and so they provide the basis for the functionality, simple handling and reliability of automation technology.

In the project ‘Insect cells as sensors for environmental toxins’, Fraunhofer EMFT is developing a novel test method in which living insect cells are used as sensitive biosensors. This allows even the smallest toxic effects of pesticides to be detected quickly, without labelling and automatically. The aim is to identify risks at an early stage and support the development of bee-friendly pesticides – an important contribution to the protection of insects and biodiversity.

The research project »Velektronik - Vertrauenswürdige Elektronik (ZEUS)« of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), aims to establish a networking platform for trusted electronics as an interface between research and industry.

SENNA is a programmable neuromorphic processor based on a mixed-signal, circuit‑switched Field‑Programmable Spiking Neuron Array (FPSNA).

Edge computing is considered a key for new IoT applications. In order to bring artificial intelligence into future edge products, Fraunhofer EMFT researchers are working together with Fraunhofer IIS and Fraunhofer IPMS as part of the EU ANDANTE project to develop innovative mixed-signal artificial neural network (ANN) accelerator with computation-in-memory (CIM) ability. These are intended to enable the construction of solid hardware and software platforms for AI application development.

With the Soldering Mobile, the Center for Interconnection Technology in Electronics ZVE at Fraunhofer EMFT is now offering its customers an attractive alternative to onsite training courses at the Oberpfaffenhofen training center. The soldering station on wheels can be put into operation directly at the customer's premises using plug & play.

The Fraunhofer Center for »Biogenic Value Creation and Smart Farming« conducts research and development on innovative technologies for sustainable production and processing of agricultural products along the whole value chain.

Aquaplaning and black ice turn streets into dangerous slides, which often leads to serious accidents. Within the framework of the high-performance center »secure intelligent systems« (LZSiS), Fraunhofer EMFT and Uedelhoven Studios are working together on a solution to the problem. A real-time warning system shall identify the potential danger due to water or ice on the road surface, thus enabling a predictive detection of the road conditions. Such an early warning system would increase the road safety for all traffic participants.