Annual Report: Highlights 2023

Cutting-edge research drives your success

Dear readers,

Developing outstanding products and services for our customers, initiating groundbreaking research projects, and building a more sustainable world are objectives that Fraunhofer IIS has pursued intensively over the last year. This Annual Report provides insights into our wide-ranging activities in a new, compact format.

In 2024, we will continue working on the major challenges that face our economy and society. As part of the Bavarian Chip Design Center, for example, we are helping to bolster the technological sovereignty and competitiveness of the Bavarian economy in collaboration with Fraunhofer AISEC and Fraunhofer EMFT as well as five higher education institutions. The new center is devoted to training skilled workers, facilitating access to manufacturing and supply chains for integrated circuits, and building up an ecosystem for chip design. Find out more here.

In terms of focus topics and flagships that showcase our institute’s innovative capacity, we have identified four strategic initiatives that are key to determining future developments and that we wish to specifically support: neuromorphic computing, 5G/6G mobile technologies, generative AI in speech and signal processing, and X-ray imaging in electromobility. You will find more information on these topics in our online magazine over the course of the year and, of course, in our next Annual Report.

We look forward to bringing you many fascinating insights into our work!

© Fraunhofer IIS / Peter Roggenthin
Directors of Fraunhofer IIS (from left): Professor Bernhard Grill, Professor Albert Heuberger, Professor Alexander Martin

FOBP: A laboratory in space

The Fraunhofer On-Board Processor can be controlled and reprogrammed from Earth at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers. For companies and research institutes from the world of satellite communications, this provides an opportunity to test the functionality of new technologies in the real conditions found in space.

New Space and AI join forces to tackle land consumption

Although it is estimated that some 5 to 10 percent of industrial sites in Germany lie unused, there is currently no nationwide map of such sites. Now, this problem will be addressed by AI with a view to identifying unused sites based on satellite images. This project by our Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services serves as an example for other New Space applications.