Hans-Thomas Hengl

At university, Hoai My Van found her way to artificial intelligence. Making AI reliable for industrial manufacturing is now at the heart of her work at Fraunhofer IKS. In her spare time, however, somebody else calls the shots: Biffi.

Dr. Thomas Wiltschko, Manager for Safety of ADAS & AD at Mercedes-Benz AG, is a member of the Safetronic Program Committee, the international conference for the holistic safety of road vehicles. As an internationally recognized expert on ISO 26262 and ISO/TS 5083, he explains in the interview why the interplay of safety standards is essential for a holistic assessment and what opportunities the use of artificial intelligence opens up for the development of safe driver assistance systems.

Since this year, Moritz Schneider has been a member of the program committee for Safetronic, the international conference on the holistic safety of road vehicles. In this interview, the functional safety expert at the BMW Group discusses his motivation and explains why safety is more than just a technical objective.

Fraunhofer IKS has introduced its Playground. This platform is especially designed for companies to explore the institute's offerings. In an interview, Institute Director Prof. Dr. Mario Trapp discusses the concept behind the Fraunhofer IKS Playground.

Delphine Kervarec-Vicq, Product Safety Director at Valeo, is a new member of the program committee for Safetronic, the international conference on holistic safety for road vehicles. In an interview with Safe Intelligence online magazine, she talks about her motivation for joining the committee and explains the importance of safety for automated driving.

Ensuring the safety of AI functions in vehicles remains a challenge that must be mastered step by step. However, visible progress is being made on the road to autonomous driving, says Dr. Reinhard Stolle, deputy director of Fraunhofer IKS. And the success of ChatGPT & Co. is also likely to be leveraged for highly automated vehicles.

Fraunhofer IKS has joined the Fraunhofer Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Alliance. According to the Institute Director Mario Trapp, exchange and collaboration within the alliance make it possible to pool expertise and create synergies - to the benefit of customers.

For Safetronic 2025, we were able to gain two new members of the program committee. One of them is Edith Holland, Chief Engineer Functional Safety at the vehicle engineering, test and development consultancy HORIBA MIRA. She spoke to Safe Intelligence online magazine about her motivation and the importance of safety for road vehicles now and in future.

Quality assurance is one of the, if not the most crucial competitive factors for industrial companies. German companies have long since recognized this and generally do not have to contend with quality issues. But that comes at a cost. Artificial intelligence is now believed to become a game changer in quality assurance. Dr. Niels Syassen, Executive Board member with responsibility for SICK AG’s Technology & Digitalization portfolio, explains how this will work.

This year's two-day Safetronic conference will once again focus on a wide range of presentations to the holistic safety of road vehicles. Frank Kirschke-Biller, member of the program committee, discusses focal points and highlights for participants in an interview.

The EU has developed a legal framework for artificial intelligence (AI) products. The aim is to protect citizens and companies from potential harm that may be caused by the use of artificial intelligence. What does this mean for companies that develop AI products?

It takes time. And it will take time. But it will come: Fraunhofer IKS is making a decisive research contribution to autonomous driving, explains Dr. Reinhard Stolle, the new head of the Mobility business unit and deputy director of the institute. But there is still a lot to be done.

The new Fraunhofer IKS Safety Companion is an AI agent designed to support human developers with safety-critical tasks. It uses large language models (LLMs) to understand tasks and to identify and implement the appropriate safety concepts. Executive Director Mario Trapp and Florian Geissler, Senior Scientist at Fraunhofer IKS, introduce the Safety Companion in an interview.

Andreas Knapp is a member of the program committee for Safetronic 2023, the international conference on holistic safety for road vehicles. In this interview, he discusses the content that the participants can expect to enjoy and the things he is particularly looking forward to.

Two leading experts from the Fraunhofer IKS and the University of York in the safety of complex systems have published a paper proposing a new approach to assure the safety of cognitive cyber-physical systems (CPS), including automated driving systems.

Registration for this year's Safetronic (November 8 - 9, 2022) has already started. Save your ticket now and take advantage of the early bird rate until October 10. Safetronic will again be organized as a hybrid conference.

Safety will be the topic of focus at Fraunhofer IKS from September to November. Three events with different focal points will address the topic of safety in connection with complex software systems in various industries, primarily autonomous cognitive systems.

22 abstracts were submitted for this year’s Safetronic conference (November 8–9, 2022), with the Program Committee selecting the best of them. Simon Fürst, Cooperation Management Automated Driving at BMW Group, Munich, and Conference Co-chair, explains the topics Safetronic will focus on as well as the highlights visitors can expect.

The international conference Safetronic holistically addresses the safety of road vehicles. Abstracts for conference papers may be submitted until May 9, 2022.

The “QuaST” (quantum-enabling services and tools for industrial applications) project, led by Fraunhofer IKS, is now underway. Jeanette Lorenz, Senior Scientist at the Quantum Computing Department of Fraunhofer IKS, heads the project. In this interview, she explains what QuaST is all about.

The Fraunhofer IKS Safe Intelligence blog starts the new year with a big change: From now on, there is also an English version of the blog.

The EAI IC4S international conference has awarded the prize for the best paper to Fraunhofer IKS. The topic of the paper is a concept for safe and efficient collaboration between autonomous mobile robots (AMR) and people in shared areas.

In the field of modern warehouse logistics, speed is crucial to success. This is where autonomous mobile robots (AMR) come in. In order to perform their tasks, they must respond as flexibly as possible to new environmental conditions and warehouse goods. ResilientSOA, the framework developed by Fraunhofer IKS, provides the necessary prerequisites. In this interview, project manager Florian Wörter explains exactly how it works.

Safe intelligence is the central research topic of the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS. This topic is very important from a technology perspective as well as with regard to the economy and society. The two Chairs of the Advisory Board for the IKS development project see it the same way — each from their own perspective.

Fraunhofer IKS has established an advisory board to provide expert support to the IKS development project. The advisory board convened for its first regular meeting on April 14. The two Chairs, Thomas Gallner and Prof. Thomas Seidl, talk about their motivation for getting involved. And about the aspects on which they intend to focus.

High-performance centers pool together the expertise of Fraunhofer Institutes at a regional level and reinforce this know-how through collaboration with additional university and non-university research organizations. In Munich, the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS is a partner in the High-Performance Center Secure Intelligent Systems LZSiS.

Science needs to prove that systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) are safe enough. That is what Prof. Simon Burton, who recently became Division Director for Safety at Fraunhofer IKS, is calling for. In this interview he explains the institute’s approaches to ensuring safety.

On the automotive market, traditional manufacturers are in a head-to-head race with new players from the software world. In the end, the winner will be decided not only on the basis of technological innovation, but also by how secure the technologies are.

In this interview apl. Prof. Dr. habil. Mario Trapp, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, talks about the competencies of the institute that make cognitive systems safe.

Dr. Sabine Sickinger, Director of Organizational Strategy and Administration at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, talks in the following interview about how dynamic research work succeeds through agile project organization.