Webinar 4

Identify your EU funding solution to make innovation happen

An European Commission’s update on the upcoming calls dedicated to smart systems. IoT, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart energy and smart mobility are all new businesses to embrace.
During the webinar, experts shared best practices and programs opportunities for European companies.

Webinar 5

Impact of the GDPR on Smart Systems Integration: Privacy by design for IoT devices

The growing digitisation of our economy has created new need for data protection. The design and integration of privacy protection solutions in the engineering of smart systems and services is still a challenge ahead of us.

During this inSSIght webinar, Jérôme GORIN, Expert Engineer at the CNIL, will present the recommendations of Regulatory Authority on Data Protection whereby smart system providers must comply with the new “Privacy Impact Assessment” process.

Take the opportunity of this webinar to ask directly your questions to GDPR expert.

Webinar 6

Industry 4.0 — From smart system integration to smart people ecosystems

This webinar offers a comprehensive overview of the question by discussing the industrial evolution and its consequences in terms of business, skills management and social changes. Our experts will share their experience. Stefan Saller will discuss the impact of Industry 4.0 on smart systems through the presentation of major digitisation solutions and Cédric Nguyen will tell us what it takes for companies to engage in digitisation.

Webinar 7

Michael Scholles (Fraunhofer IPMS) — Smart Systems in Medical and Health

Innovative technologies in healthcare have long been integrated into devices that treat acute or chronic diseases, and which affect vital prognoses or alter drastically the quality of life of numerous patients. However, tremendous progress in research fields such as bionic, biomedical, bio-sensing, bio-energy harvesting and low-power electronics for communicating securely and extending processing and memory capacities now offer completely new approaches that will radically change the way diseases are diagnosed, treated and followed-up. Healthcare systems face a huge challenge in providing the same level of care, in an appropriate, efficient and cost-effective way, to a burgeoning population. By 2030, the world population will have risen by 1.3 billion, the middle class by 3 billion; due to ageing, the world’s population in the age bracket 65 + is projected to increase by 436 million people and the urban population by 1.5 billion, who will require increased access to healthcare facilities and services. Digitization of healthcare is an answer to those challenges and Smart Systems will significantly contribute. The Automated Hospital with innovative solutions for diagnosis and therapy like automated sampling and biopsies, multimodal imaging modalities, automated monitoring of patients vital functions and automated DNA sequencing as well as the automated operating theatre with image-guided and robot-assisted surgery, exoskeletons and Smart implants is one, very prominent example. The same underlying technologies can be used for advanced point-of-care diagnostics, enabling the way to a personalized medicine. This webinar will give examples of Smart Systems in Medical and Health, will highlight the EPoSS activities towards the Automated Hospital, and will feature requirements and challenges in this context.

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Webinar 8

Thilo Bein (Fraunhofer LBF) — Applying smart systems to ensure the reliability of complex structures

Condition based maintenance (CBM) concepts are widely used in the industry and are also applied to modern vehicles. Since structural components are becoming increasingly complex, e.g. due to lightweight composite materials or as part of a mechatronic system, it is useful to apply CBM also to those parts. This requires the application of sensors to the components. The permanent instrumentation with systems for structural health monitoring is yet implemented for high performance structures, e.g. in military aircraft. Those rather expensive systems are not directly applicable to other markets like machine tooling or road or rail vehicles.

Modern products are designed with respect to loads derived from selective measurements on prototypes following pre-defined usage profiles. This should enable a cost-effective, energy-efficient and lightweight design. Of course, also safety aspects are regarded. Therefore, some misuse and worst case scenarios are included in the design, and structural parts are always oversized by a certain safety margin. Normally, this margin is never exploited, and at the end-of-life of the vehicle, parts are recycled which could be used for a longer period.

From many industrial sectors, the benefits of condition-based maintenance have been proven, which aim at optimizing maintenance intervals and using less spare parts. Those are most effective, if the actual condition of the part under consideration is monitored automatically by a sensor system. As modern materials and components of many products become are more complex and multi-functional, structural health monitoring becomes a relevant part of a condition based maintenance concepts. In contrast to current SHM solutions, the use of low cost smart sensors becomes essential to enable cost efficient solutions. The utilization of rather weak hardware and low communication bandwidth requires distribution of damage detection algorithms in the network and the application of efficient signal processing. For a fully autonomous operation, energy harvesting, e.g. from vibrations, is an interesting solution. Future work will have to include the application of energy efficient sensors, e.g. low power accelerometers, the optimization of energy harvesting systems, and the integration of the systems into long-term tests.

In this webinar, several relevant topics will be touched and examples for solutions will be discussed. This includes the specific requirements for the system design of a smart sensor network for SHM, the utilization of cost efficient hardware and the energy supply for wireless sensor nodes. Finally, a prototype application of a smart sensor network for a compact mobile system will be described.

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Webinar 9

Sven Rzepka (Fraunhofer ENAS) — Reliability and Functional Safety of Smart Systems

The rapid changes in the application fields mobility, industry, energy and other infrastructural domains (e.g., smart city) are made possible by new electronic systems that do not only offer highly smart functionalities but also provide them at a much higher level of system availability and functional safety.  In addition, the fast growth in system complexity must not lead to a longer development time or fabrication costs for the new products.  Therefore, a new set of methods and techniques have been implemented, which can boost the efficiency and the coverage of the reliability assessments to the level needed by these new application fields. Pro-active anticipation, assessment, and mitigation of potential failure risks is the key in this new strategy.  It rests on systematic studies of the system behavior during service life and the possible degradation mechanisms that may occur.  It aims at the optimum design right first time, in which the essential aspects of functionality, manufacturability, reliability and robustness are all covered simultaneously and without time-consuming experimental iteration loops.  This approach involves three distinct fields of activities:

• Tests and Analytics – Physics of Failure
  Experimental reliability assessment by tests and analyses providing comprehensive coverage of the relevant failure modes at minimum time and effort
• Virtual Techniques – Simulation
  Acceleration of the reliability evaluation and ‘Design for Reliability’ (DfR) in daily industrial practice by applying virtual techniques based on numerical simulation
• Health Monitoring – Functional Safety
  Prevention of any unexpected failure by comprehensive health monitoring and field use assessments so that preventive maintenance can safely be triggered when needed.

The webinar highlights the activities in all three fields based on examples illustrating the new approach.

Webinar 10

Harald Pötter (Fraunhofer IZM) — Robust wireless sensing

Using a practical example, the webinar will introduce you to the essential functional components of a wireless sensor system including the required software. This example, the monitoring of high-voltage power lines, explains how the requirements resulting from the application can be converted into a specification for designing self-contained sensors. Which requirements are important for self-sufficient operation and which parameters have to be specified?

The block system design describes the processes starting from the specification of the radio sensor up to the prototype. Various classes of self-sufficient sensor systems are presented and presented for these essential functional groups (control unit, radio interface, power supply, data handling) of self-sufficient radio sensors. The component characteristics essential for the sensor systems are named and explained on the basis of components available on the market.

The design of the firmware plays a central role in self-sufficient sensor technology. Due to the autonomous operation limited power resources and the demand for a low-energy operation on the one hand and the desire for high quality measurement and real-time on the other hand there are conflicting requirements that need to be merged by means of firmware. The webinar presents concepts for driver software of common microprocessors and explains the necessary interfaces for the integration of sensor-specific software.

The limiting factor in wireless sensor technology is often the power supply. Extensively discussed examples first deal with energy management. Advantages and disadvantages as well as the characteristics of energy storage are presented. Finally, possibilities of using energy from the environment (energy harvesting) are presented and discussed.

In addition to the power supply, the wireless interface decisively determines the functionality of a self-sufficient sensor system. In a first step, it will be presented on the basis of which considerations the design of the transmission link has to be made. The idea of established wireless sensor networks and evolving visions complete the considerations. The webinar will then pay particular attention to the selection and placement of antennas as well as the possibility of using low-power protocols to minimize the energy required for communication. At the end of the webinar, data handling and sharing will be briefly discussed.

Webinar 11

What are the keys to success in engaging the AI revolution with smart solutions?

According to a recent Yole Developpement report, for consumer applications only, the artificial intelligence hardware market could reach more than $10 billion for embedded hardware and more than $13 billion for stand-alone chips in 2023. All industrial fields will be concerned by the AI revolution and AI requires more than software expertise.
Join the webinar to get experts advices and ask your questions to leverage on AI to strengthen your own differentiation.

During this webinar, AI market projections will be introduced by Yohann Tschudi based on the latest Yole Développement report Hardware & Software for AI – Consumer focus. Main drivers and challenges to be addressed will be reviewed.
Stefan Wolf, VDI-VDE IT will provide a spotlight on the specific AI challenge and opportunity for energy applications.
In addition, Jonathan Byrne will share his own experience in developing AI solution at Intel Movidius.
Our key experts will answer your questions during the session. So get ready and send your questions now!