Developing outstanding products and services for our customers, initiating groundbreaking research projects, and building a more sustainable world are objectives that Fraunhofer IIS pursued intensively last year. The Fraunhofer IIS Annual Report provides insights into our wide-ranging activities.
The AI Application and Test Center (ATKI) will be established until 2025 at the Dresden location. With this center, the Engineering of Adaptive Systems Division plans to offer tailor-made consulting and services for businesses, with a specific focus not only on companies taking their first steps into the world of artificial intelligence (AI), but also on users seeking to implement a specific use case.
Fundamentally, when businesses need to determine which of their processes and use cases are well suited to an AI-based solution, AI readiness checks help them to answer this question. An on-site expert workshop evaluates the feasibility of implementing various options at the company, giving rise to specific recommendations for a solution incorporating artificial intelligence or a viable alternative.
The question for other companies is which hardware to use for the data-intensive processing of algorithms if calculations are not to be carried out in the cloud – for example, in the event of strict data-protection requirements or a need for real-time responses. So that businesses can make well-founded decisions on their specific use of AI, the AI Application and Test Center offers tailor-made consulting and services with a focus on three key aspects:
1. hardware performance for the processing of AI tasks
2. edge AI integration
3. data reduction when using edge computing
Comprehensive and manufacturer-independent comparisons of current AI hardware, as well as practical tests, allow quick, comprehensive, and independent determination of which electronics are ideally suited to the customer’s intended application of AI. In this process, the researchers at ATKI consider the full range of electronics, from microcontrollers to powerful industrial computers, as well as all relevant performance parameters such as processing time, latencies, resource requirements, and power consumption.
In addition, the scientists are investigating intelligent sensor systems in order to test their suitability and qualify them for industrial applications. Data reduction is a key aspect when it comes to the use of AI-based sensor hardware (edge AI). The researchers are analyzing various approaches to reducing data flow and evaluating their suitability for specific AI tasks, taking account of information loss and deriving recommendations for the handling of raw data and intermediate information.
The range of services is completed by a demo production environment that the researchers plan to use for demonstrating the performance of AI technologies and components in a practical environment and for testing them in specific use cases. Using real machines and systems from the production environment, the researchers are therefore addressing subject areas such as condition and quality monitoring, data acquisition and analysis, AI hardware, and robotics in industrial transport and production processes.
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Division Engineering of Adaptive Systems EAS