At the invitation of Haramaya University in Addis Ababa, the project participants, including GIZ Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Electric Utility (EEU), have now met in Ethiopia for the final workshop.  
 
The aim of the project is to develop and build an innovative, intelligent monitoring system that can monitor the electricity distribution network of the Ethiopian Electric Utility (EEU) using advanced measurement and communication technologies and the IoT (Internet of Things). 
 
Prof Stork is being accompanied by his research assistants Dejenie Birile Gemeda and Markus Lehner, who are checking the installation of the sensors in Harar, among other things.
The project results were presented at the workshop and practical implementation is now being planned and prepared.

We are delighted to congratulate Felix Reisgys from Prof. Eric Sax's group of external doctoral students on his successful dissertation entitled "Credibility and use of scenario-based X-in-the-loop testing for driver assistance systems".

The dissertation presents how scenario-based testing and simulation can be integrated into existing development processes for driver assistance systems. Based on this, a process for evaluating the credibility of simulative tests of these systems by comparing them with reality is developed.

Congratulations!

The Standardized Automotive Software Workshop took place in Bad Liebenzell on 30.11.2023.
The workshop was aimed at engineers and researchers from the automotive industry as well as scientists from the Innovation Campus Mobility of the Future (ICM), particularly from the research field of software system architecture. In addition to the lively exchange in various working groups within the specialist topics and a joint lunch break, visitors could look forward to exciting keynote speeches on open source developments and standards in automotive software. Prof. Sax moderated a panel discussion in which four top-class participants from industry and research took part: Thorge Erichsen (Mercedes-Benz), Dr. Christian Müller from ZF Group, Dr. Marc Weber (Vector Informatik) and Prof. Michael Weyrich (University of Stuttgart). ITIV employees helped shape the parallel working groups in the afternoon and discussed innovative ideas.

In the morning, the students travelled by bus to Getinge AB's largest development site in Rastatt. The excursion was organised in cooperation between Prof. Eric Sax's ITIV group and Getinge Rastatt. After guided tours of production and development, there was plenty of opportunity to talk to other employees after lunch before returning to ITIV in the afternoon. We received very positive feedback from the 18 students, for which we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks.

What special challenges does the medical technology industry offer? How can modern technologies improve patient care? What career opportunities do these new technologies open up? We will provide the answers during a customized tour of Getinge AB's largest development site in Rastatt on Nov. 15, 2023. Round-trip transportation, on-site program and catering are free of charge for all participants.

The concrete program and the possibility to reserve one of the limited places is available in direct contact with M. Sc. Andreas Puder, who organizes the excursion as a PhD student of Prof. Eric Sax and employee of Getinge. Registration by Wednesday, 08.11.2023 at the latest at andreas.puder@kit.edu.

A colorful program of presentations awaited the expert audience at the world's largest congress for automotive electronics, software and applications at the World Conference Center Bonn from Oct. 18 to 19, 2023. Almost 1,000 participants met at the accompanying exhibition. Prof. Eric Sax and a team of his doctoral students from ITIV and FZI were represented with their own booth, and two demonstrators (bus platooning as a model in M 1:87 and test setup for tailgating) explained new technologies for the future of mobility to visitors.  Nicole Kechler was also able to convince the expert audience with her presentation "Key Factors of a robust and safe Automated Driving Function - Transferable Insights of City-Bus Platooning in Munich".
Team photo at the booth (from left to right): Marc Schindewolf (ITIV), Lennart Ries (FZI), Nicole Kechler (ITIV), Christian Steinhauser (FZI)

For further exchange within the existing research cooperation with KIT, two members of Prof. Yu Wang's group, Yudong and Tianchen Zhao, were guests at ITIV. They were welcomed by the team of Prof. Becker, one item of the program was the talk of Tianchen Zhao on "Ada3D : Exploiting the Spatial Redundancy with Adaptive Inference for Efficient 3D Object Detection".

The day before yesterday, the official opening of KIT Science Week took place in the Audimax of KIT. The opening was marked by a keynote speech of marine biologist Prof. Antje Boetius, head of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, on the topic "Humans and our environment - what keeps us together? She is convinced: "We have opportunities and can make a difference together. But time is short."

The Market of Opportunities in the foyer of the Audimax then provided an opportunity to learn about innovative climate and environmental projects. Also present from ITIV were Prof. Eric Sax with Nicole Kechler, Moritz Zink and Luca Seidel from his doctoral team with the bus platooning demonstrator, which illustrates the automation of e-buses in road traffic. 

Until October 15, people even without a scientific background can come into contact with researchers from all over the world at around 60 events during "KIT Science Week".

To mark its fourth anniversary, ICM presented groundbreaking projects and results at the "ICM Day - Future Mobility Open Labs" at the ARENA2036 research factory in Stuttgart on October 5, 2023.
ITIV is involved in several ICM projects such as SdMobi2/SWUpCar and INDU2/OTrace. Prof. Eric Sax was able to present the most important project results with his PhD students Marc Schindewolf, Daniel Grimm, Julian Lorenz and Houssem Guissouma, Martin Sommer gave a keynote speech on the OTrace project and the demonstrator vehicle DeVee with integrated sensors and ECUs was shown to the interested audience. The groups of Prof. Becker and Prof. Stork were also represented to present the results of the project SdMobi3/LETSCOPE.

Last week, the Lichtenthal Monastery on the outskirts of the city of Baden-Baden was the ideal setting for scientific lectures, feedback and discussions as part of the PhD retreat of Prof. Sax's team. With its historical character of the buildings, the monastery offers a contemplative atmosphere for deceleration and concentration. To compensate, there was a varied program with a guided tour of the SWR Baden-Baden, a visit to the museum "Sammlung Frieder Burda" and a trip to the casino. The flair of a country school stay came up with the movie evening about the decoding of the Enigma or the online game "Kahoot". Every year, the doctoral retreat offers an ideal opportunity to think outside the box and to find overlaps through the topics and projects of the other participants.

Exciting lectures, inspiring presentations and a llama hike for team-building - there was a compact program at the PhD students' seminar with Prof. Becker.

The art nouveau hotel Trifels in the Palatinate Forest and the idyllic town of Annweiler provided ideal conditions for the scientific and interdisciplinary exchange of experiences between the doctoral students on the status of their work and the discussion of research results.

From 05.09-08.09.2023, the 36th SOCC (IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference) took place in Santa Clara, California. Prof. Becker was General Chair and Tanja Harbaum Technical Program Chair in the committee. They were supported by Fabian Lesniak, Tim Hotfilter (both ITIV) and Brian Pachideh (FZI) with their papers. The SOCC offered a three-day technical programme for more than 120 participants with keynote and plenary lectures, oral and poster presentations, thematic panel discussions and a day of industry talks. Next year the conference will be held in Dresden.

Be one of the participants in this unique Master course in the winter term 2023/2024.  
Experience the complete startup process from ideation to the pitch of an investment-ready prototype in front of potential investors.  2 terms, 15 ECTS (Economics: 18 ECTS), application until October 8th! 

UNIPRENEURS, the initiative to strengthen spin-offs from universities in Germany, awarded 20 outstanding professors.
The award ceremony was held yesterday by Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger and Dr. Anna Christmann, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Startups at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, at the Allianz Forum at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

The co-founder of one of Prof. Stork's current startups, Dr. Simon Stock (Metis Neurotec), accepted the award on his behalf. Congratulations!

We are pleased to congratulate Con Tran Vu from Prof. Stork's PhD group on successfully completing his dissertation entitled "Towards Predictive Maintenance For Radiation Generation Vacuum Components". The practical thesis presents a recipe consisting of systems, processes and algorithms for the realization of a predictive maintenance solution in the context of a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). 

Congratulations!

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eric Sax hosted an online info session together with Martina Waldner, Senior Programme Consultant HECTOR School. In the field of mobility, we are currently experiencing unprecedented change, the likes of which have not been seen for over a century. The Master's programme in Mobility Systems Engineering and Management provides the knowledge, skills and experience to drive innovation and meet the challenges of tomorrow.

As part of the course "Practical Software Engineering (PSE)", an excursion with 30 students to the company IPG in Karlsruhe took place on 20.07.2023. ITIV, represented on that day by David Kraus and Luca Seidel, cooperates with the Karlsruhe company within the internship. During the internship, a software project for the implementation of a highway pilot is designed, implemented and validated with the IPG simulation tool CarMaker.

Dr. Pascal Piecha from IPG presented different hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) systems that can be used with the CarMaker software. CarMaker is a central simulation tool in PSE, so that a clear relation to the practice in the industry is established here. This year, for the first time, a competition was held where the two best student teams could test their highway pilot on one of the HiL systems. At the end of the day, IPG organized a get-together with beer and pizza. A successful event all around!

As part of the U-Shift II project, which is funded by the state and coordinated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), a prototype setup took place at the Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines Stuttgart (FKFS) at the University of Stuttgart. Among other things, this involves developing and implementing the E/E architecture of a vehicle. David Kraus, Veljko Vucinic and Zacharias Franz from ITIV were involved in its implementation.

The workshop at the ITIV on digital dementia intervention and prevention in the age of AI paved the way for innovative approaches to address the challenges of dementia in the digital age. The first day started with a series of interesting presentations. The speakers from Karlsruhe (KIT and FZI) focused on the topic of software as a medical product. Researchers from RIKEN CBAT from Japan presented the use of AI and robots against cognitive impairments. The DZNE Rostock highlighted the need for digital support for people with dementia. Participating institutions will share their individual strengths to globally positively impact the lives of people affected by dementia.

The ISVLSI 2023 symposium, held on the 20.-23. of June in Iguazu, Brazil, focused on emerging trends, new ideas and concepts in microelectronics.

Prof. Becker gave a keynote talk on "Smart Scalable & Embedded Automotive Supercomputing" and as chair of the Steering Committee he led, among others, a special session on automotive applications, which included presentations on various topics.

Among other topics, the ITIV team presented a paper on "DREAM: Distributed Reinforcement Learning Enabled Adaptive Mixed-Critical NoC."

Presented were the institutes CEL, IBT, IMI, IPQ, ITIV and IHE and thus a wide range of scientific and innovative topics: Development of new modules and systems of microwave technology, methods and computer-aided tools for the design of electronic systems and microsystems, modeling of the human heart with its electrophysiological as well as mechanical properties and biosignal processing, mobile communication and the digital signal processing dominating it, and virtual engineering in the product life cycle. Accordingly, the partner landscape is composed of all innovative industrial branches of information and communication technology.

Michael Müller, PhD student of Prof. Eric Sax and working at WMF as Head of Product Engineering and Development in the Consumer Goods division, started his PhD project at ITIV in 2022 with the topic: "Use of machine learning methods for optimized preparation of food and beverages with kitchen appliances". In order to uncover the secret of optimizing the taste of prepared foods, a coffee machine has now been set up at the institute as a test object, which will be used to find out how great the influence of the recipe on taste perception is by changing individual parameters and adapting the recipe.

The annual meeting of the 6G platform is currently taking place in Berlin. The goal of the project "Platform for Future Communication Technologies and 6G (6G-Platform)" is to provide scientific contributions to the content of 6G as well as to ensure the scientific-organizational support of the processes that are necessary for the successful implementation of the German-European 6G program.

M. Sc. Christian Maximilian Karle (KIT, ITIV), M. Sc. Marc Neu (KIT, ITIV) and Benjamin Nuß (KIT, IHE) together with M. Sc. Andre Scheder (FAU, LHFT) and M. Sc. Lukas Witte (FAU, LHFT) present the jointly developed 26 GHz MIMO testbed.

After a break of four years due to the pandemic, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was back in action and on site on June 17, 2023, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the North Campus in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen to provide exciting insights into research at the Open House.

ITIV was there with a booth on the "Open6GHub" project. With their baseband system, Christian Maximilian Karle (ITIV) and Johannes Galinsky (IHE) gave interesting insights into a technology that provides important contributions to the global 6G standard.

Modern cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as cars or production plants, are full of electronic and mechanical components that are controlled by software. The system as a whole can only function if all these parts interact perfectly. Designing such systems poses the challenge of keeping the system architecture consistent att all times. New methods will be developped in a Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich) Consistency in the View-Based Development of Cyber-Physical Systems (Convide) at KIT, with a budget of 11 million € over four years. In the project, ITIV will explore new consistency-based methods and processes for incremental safety analysis and validation of cyber-physical systems, such as automated vehicles.

Los ging es morgens mit der Besichtigung des Rudolf-Fettweis-Werkes in Forbach. Zum Komplex des Pumpspeicher- und Laufwasserkraftwerkes gehören mehrere über Stollen und Rohrleitungen verbundene Werke, die es während einer interessanten Führung zu entdecken galt. Nach einem leckeren Mittagessen im Naturfreundehaus Badener Höhe war die Gelegenheit zu einem Besuch des Mehliskopfes mit seinen vielfältigen Freizeitangeboten. 

Prof. Eric Sax has signed a cooperation agreement together with the principal Mrs. Zimmer and Mrs. Höninger from department 76 of the Regierungspräsidium Karlsruhe to inspire young people already at their school for a technically oriented study. Visits of lectures and internships at the institute will give insights into everyday student life and an overview of possible study contents.

In addition, KIT holds annual information events at the Carl-Engler-Schule, where young people can ask specific questions about their personal study plans.

As part of the European project XANDAR, researchers from ITIV participated in the “Concertation and Consultation on Computing Continuum” organized by DG Connect and the EUCloudEdgeIoT initiative from May 10 to May 11. During the two-day event, Prof. Jürgen Becker and Tobias Dörr presented success stories from XANDAR and shared the consortium's recommendations for future research on cloud, edge, and IoT computing.

Some already know in elementary school what they want to study one day, for most of them it is still a big open question around the Abi. To make the decision a little easier, about 100 study programs of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) will be presented at the Campus Day on May 13. With guided tours, question rounds, and a lot of information, the KIT faculties as well as university groups and student councils will present themselves from 10 a.m. on.

Advice is also available for bachelor graduates who are interested in a master's degree. A live program on the Campus Day stage and food trucks will provide variety. We are currently busy organizing and look forward to many prospective students!

The highly automated and networked vehicles of the future will need powerful computer systems that perform sophisticated calculations and process huge amounts of data. For this purpose, 30 partners from industry and research are developing suitable processors, interfaces, and system architectures in the CeCaS project. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is involved in the project coordinated by Infineon with two institutes (ITIV and ITEC-CES). The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding CeCaS within the MANNHEIM initiative.

Die Doktoranden aus der Gruppe von Prof. Eric Sax, Jacqueline Henle (FZI), David Kraus (ITIV) und Hubert Padusinski (FZI), erläutern u.a. Prof. Hanselka und Volker Wissing, Bundesminister für Digitales und Verkehr, den Demonstrator des TEMPUS-Projektes, in dem es am ITIV um Konzeptionierung, Implementierung und Evaluation der Fahrfunktionen für ein automatisiertes Platooning von E Bussen im ÖPNV geht. Das ausgestellte Modell mit realistischen städtischen Umgebungssituationen veranschaulicht die Herausforderungen des Bus-Platoonings.

We congratulate Victor Hugo Betancourt from Prof. Becker's group on successfully completing his PhD thesis “Task allocation for efficient edge computing systems”. In his work, an efficient allocation method was developed which realizes a combined consideration of resource availability and application demand to compute automatically a reallocation at runtime. For this purpose, the allocation problem is modeled at development time and the information is used at runtime. The special focus is on the allocation due to changes during operation.

We congratulate Florian Schade, Christian Maximilian Karle and Iris Walter (from left to right) for this year's KIT Faculty Teaching Award (Electrical Engineering and Information Technology).

At yesterday's annual celebration in the Audimax, Prof. Wanner (right) presented them with the certificates as an award for the outstanding course "Laboratory Circuit Design", which will start again in the next winter semester.

Congratulations!

A new study from the U.S. proposes a fourth traffic light phase to make traffic flow faster and safer. The new white traffic light is intended to give autonomous vehicles control over the flow of traffic and make traffic jams a problem of the past. Prof. Eric Sax talks about this with Radioeins.

We are pleased with Christian King from the PhD group of Prof. Sax about the successful dissertation titled "Assessment of driver assistance systems in the field of scenario-based testing". The dissertation presents a test concept that can be used to test and assess automated driving functions in a wide variety of driving scenarios. Congratulations!

32 students, 3 supervisors from each working group at ITIV and 4 tutors participated in the "Applied Machine Learning Algorithms Lab" - short:LAMA.
Last week, the final plenary presentations took place, consisting of a ten-minute presentation and a Q&A session. After an oral colloquium and a general evaluation, the lab then ends, which often prepares a good transition to final theses and internships in further studies.

The ride of the automated streetcar at the depot in Potsdam rounded off the final meeting of the AStriD project (Autonomous Tramway in Depot) on 08.02.23. ITIV successfully contributed its expertise on the specification and digitalization of depot processes, the automation of processes and the identification of the data required for this during the project. The results achieved by ITIV were now presented on site by Prof. Eric Sax, Nathalie Brenner and Nicole Kechler.

The aim of the project is to develop a new generation of test procedures for the efficient and systematic validation of highly configurable mobility systems. The standardizable test procedures are to master the variability of the software in space and time. This will create procedures that can be applied throughout the entire life cycle to achieve high software quality.

Prof. Eric Sax: "KIT - and ITIV in particular - has a long friendship with BME (Budapest University of Technology and Economics). For this very reason, we are pleased to exchange ideas with Prof. Zsolt Szalay and his team on current topics of automotive innovations."

Automated, connected and electrified vehicles are picking up speed. However, energy-efficient and cost-effective high-end compute platforms that keep pace with the requirements for computing power and complexity with full automotive qualification (ASIL-D) are missing for full everyday suitability. In particular, AI-based topics such as autonomous driving require tailored, real-time capable and energy-efficient high-performance processors.

To achieve the high raw data rates required to measure MIMO antenna systems in the context of 6G mobile radio development, ITIV is developing a Data Acquisition System (DAQ) system with a useful data rate of 400 Gbit/s. The system is based on a server-RFSoC architecture and allows the recording of raw antenna data as well as the replay of test signals on a MIMO antenna array. The system developed by Christian Maximilian Karle and Marc Neu from Prof. Becker's team forms the basis for further 6G mobile radio development and will be made available to our project partners in the near future.

At ITIV, the shooting of instructional videos for the Digital Hardware Design Laboratory with VHDL crash course is just starting.
A first impression of the "making of" can be found in the video on Youtube.

Prof. Jeong-A Lee from the Department of Computer Engineering at CSU (Chosun University, Gwangju/Korea) visited the institute together with the president of GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea), Prof. Kiseon Kim, to discuss potential future research and exchange cooperations for students (e.g. in the form of a summer school). In this context, interesting discussions also took place with Oliver Schmidt, the head of "International Cooperations and Projects" at KIT.

After the presentation of the institute with various demonstrator presentations and the joint lunch, the participants went to the FZI Research Center for Information Technology to present ongoing AI projects.

Drive into the parking garage, get out and let the vehicle park itself using an app - this is now possible in Stuttgart. The world's first driverless parking system is to be followed by other parking garages.

Today, Prof. Eric Sax was a virtual guest on ZDF's Morgenmagazin. In the film clip, he points out weaknesses and future development potential in the field of autonomous driving.