The earth needs natural resource-efficient, biosphere-compatible and application-friendly products, to master the global challenges if we want to preserve our environment, assuage the climate change, save our public health, shape a humane working world and cope with a growing population. This all defines a requirement framework for the future technical/technological solutions of favourable industrial scalability, a simple global roll-out capability – with a smooth local adaptability – and a commercially strong viability.
The question of enough sustainable energy everywhere is as key for the planet earth and the global population as it is the sustainable generation and distribution of it. As such it is therefore a very interesting open field to actively look for new technical solutions. The sun daily delivers more than enough thermal or photonic power for the earth. To harvest this sun power, to convert it appropriately into chemical or electrical power, to storage and distribute it without excess losses represents the major challenge.
The application of smart electronic systems will guide and help us into the solutions of the energy topics.
The digital penetration of our living and working environment continuously proceeds. Unfortunately, humans are not equipped with any digital plug-in or other digital senses, therefore the man-machine-transition from the analogue working world into the digital one is especially demanding to design. A lot of work and manufacturing processes have to change dramatically, to fulfil the requests for an overall more efficient and sustainable production and ensuing exploitation. The human worker with his unique capabilities will play an important value-adding role in future highly flexible – dominated by raw materials and natural resources efficiency – manufacturing processes. To achieve this, humans need sophisticated digital support tools, which take into account the unique human capabilities and to successfully complement them in managing the accelerating change within the 21st century work and production processes.
What is needed for a future workforce integration are new ideas with a sustainable core to nurture the unique human cognitive and motor skills at its best. Electronic wearables with bio-sensitive capabilities open up new perspectives of man-machine interaction for a closely intermeshed collaboration. It is very conceivable that in a few years sophisticated production equipment is directly connecting itself to a human operator on demand or autonomously - due to a situational assessment – in support of certain manufacturing steps. Essentially that requires a high standard of smart (bio) sensor technology in conjunction with with certain AI features.