Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems

In the context of climate protection, the importance of energy efficiency is increasing, as is the share of electricity from renewable energies. Thousands of wind farms, solar modules and biogas plants already generate large quantities of green electricity. The expansion of wind power plants in particular has led to leaps in performance in recent years. In addition to the optimal utilization of the high-voltage overhead lines, the rapid detection of hazardous situations is a central issue. Fraunhofer IMS has developed a sensor system with energy self-sufficient sensor modules for monitoring the operating parameters.

Today microcontrollers can be found in almost any technical device, from washing machines to blood pressure meters and wearables. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS have develo-ped AIfES, an artificial intelligence (AI) concept for microcontrollers and sensors that contains a completely configurable artificial neural network. AIfES is a plat-form-independent machine learning library which can be used to realize self-learning microelectronics requiring no connection to a cloud or to high-perfor-mance computers. The sensor-related AI system recognizes handwriting and gestures, enabling for example gesture control of input when the library is running on a wearable.

An AI platform should build an ecosystem for health economy. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is participating with the institutes IMS and IIS as consortium partners and wants to help SMEs with the integration of AI solutions. The VDE wins with the project “CareFul KI” in the AI innovation competition that was organized by the BMWi and thereby proving themselves against 130 other applicants.

Prof. Dr. Karsten Seidl is the new head of the department micro- and nanosystems at Fraunhofer IMS in Duisburg. He also holds a chair for medical technology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Karsten Seidl helps to strengthen the topic area of biosensors at the research institute in Duisburg.