Following our interest for the fast developing technologies of microelectronic embedded systems in combination with a wealth of sophisticated sensors we think about new techniques, components and processes to contribute to the modern working environment, fundamentally user-friendly and ecological-economical sustainable solutions.
Due to our roots in the automotive industry there are some systematically nurtured topics which have such a high attraction for us that we want to dive deeply into them within the ANDROLITE framework.
The question of how we organize our future energy supply always and everywhere when we change to a predominantly sun-powered global economy is tremendously exciting with multilayered technological facets. Heterogeneous systems – both on the supply side as well as on the consumer side – have to manage large fluctuations radiating into global networks as well as in local ones. Compromising electrical network reliability or user comfort is definitely not an option. The remarkable advantage of the new sun-powered decentralized energy supply systems is their potential to provide access to energy for structural and economic weak regions. Smooth and autonomous linking, management and organisation of heterogeneous energy is an excellent challenge for smart embedded systems.
The question of how we organize work flows and manufacturing processes when more and more collaboration is demanded between smart machines and humans has to be answered soon. Therefore the human-machine interaction is not only a general top issue for driving a vehicle in comfort and safety but a general topic of our future work environment. With more robots and smart machines entering the production landscape there are novel approaches needed. Contrary to those automatons with their predominantly design-restricted – and therefore limited – flexibilities, the value adding human worker with the unique capabilities will constitute the special chainlink within the future industrial production process. But within the new data-controlled digital production environment the human being needs a different coupling to the production environment and automatons. Digital sensing between man and machine with wearable assistance systems may uniquely connect works and their production environment. Wearable embedded systems will pave the way for such modern man-machine interaction.
The massive technology leaps within the area of integrated sensor microchips with the merger of analog and digital functions directly in one piece of silicon did generate a great number of low-cost micro sensors with a very high signal quality for different environmental sensing tasks. These sensors are easily to be integrated into smart electronic systems. In due course it is possible to build automations, robots and other equipment with certain perceiving capabilities if connected to powerful edge computer platforms. Bio-sensitive properties allow automatons and robots to barrier-free operate semi-autonomously or even fully-autonomously in tight collaboration with humans in a mainly for humans structured environment and even react flexibly according to the actual situation. AI-attributable development techniques and the application of neuronal development tools enable the creation of reliable algorithms based on large data pools and data-based training models, which also even successfully master difficult sensoric situations.
The possibility to run potent sensor tasks in real-time on cost-sharp edge microcomputers and to embed this into a wireless communicating, self-organizing swarm, opens up new capabilities to perform certain tasks. Delocalised acting and relaying of functions allow novels forms shaping the work environment, support humans in their doing efficiently and provide comfort to preserve the longterm life quality.
All this is a large playground for smart embedded systems.