Press

Fire on board! This is a grave danger for any ship, but especially so when a ship is ostensibly safely docked in harbor – where “normal” firefighters are on duty and have to cope with the special challenges on board a ship. Since 2005, 44 potentially disastrous incidents have occurred in German ports alone, including 15 fires and 13 spills of hazardous materials. EFAS, a joint project coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE, is aimed at significantly improving firefighters’ safety and effectiveness through optimum equipment and technological innovations.

On May 17, 1904, a public experiment was conducted on Cologne’s Hohenzollern Bridge which would go down in history as a milestone of international engineering art. On this day, the inventor Christian Hülsmeyer was the first to succeed in detecting ships travelling on the Rhine River based on the reflections of high frequency electromagnetic waves: It was the birth of radar. On October 19, a ceremony will be held to unveil a plaque commemorating this important milestone of technological history.

For his master's thesis "File system fuzzing applied to the BSD operating system family" Christopher Krah, a graduate of the department of computer science at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and a scientist in the Applied System Analysis research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE since July, was awarded the first prize in the AFCEA Academic Award 2019, endowed with 5,000 euros.

Drones have ushered in a new dimension to airborne attacks and increasingly confront security agencies (referred to collectively in German as »BOS«) with new challenges. Drone incidents at the London Gatwick, London Heathrow and Frankfurt/Main airports have brought operations at three of the largest European airports to a temporary halt, all within a six-month period. There is also a real possibility of attacks targeting critical Infrastructure and major events in light of growing terrorist threats, which is why there is a critical need for systems that can help defend against drones. Devising such systems was the task set out for the BMBF-funded »AMBOS« project.

A nuclear emergency occurs at Austria's nuclear Zwentendorf nuclear power plant – fortunately it is just a scenario at the 2nd European Robotics Hackathon (EnRicH) 2019, where ten international teams spent a week rehearsing the emergency. The tasks set out in the competition challenged participants and their robots: they had to explore and map the situation in the reactor building, detect, measure and map radiation, as well as find and rescue casualties. Since entering the building was too dangerous for people, they were only allowed to provide support from outside the plant. The hackathon was a success for the Fraunhofer FKIE, which secured placements in two categories.

»Maritime 2050+« is a joint future study of ATLAS ELEKTRONIK, the German Aerospace Center and the Fraunhofer FKIE. It is dedicated to the development of the maritime space in the next decades and shows measures to improve the quality of life by bringing together the different economic and ecological interests. In addition to climate change and immense population growth, the authors of the future study expect an increasing exploitation of the oceans in the coming decades – for drinking water and food, but also in the use of marine resources.

Invented stories, distorted facts: fake news is spreading like wildfire on the internet and is often shared on without thought, particularly on social media. In response, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a system that automatically analyzes social media posts, deliberately filtering out fake news and disinformation. To do this, the tool analyzes both content and metadata, classifying it using machine learning techniques and drawing on user interaction to optimize the results as it goes.

The close cooperation between the Bundeswehr Cyber and Information Space Command (KdoCIR) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE is based on a new foundation. Major General Juergen Setzer, deputy inspector of the Cyber and Information Space Command, and Prof. Dr. Peter Martini, director of the Fraunhofer FKIE, have now signed an agreement to collaborate even more closely in the field of cyber security.

Accidents in nuclear power plants such as Chernobyl and Fukushima or the decommissioning and dismantling of old nuclear facilities clearly demonstrate how important it is to use robot technologies in the event of radioactive contamination. Robots can operate in places that are clearly too risky and dangerous for humans. They ensure that a picture of the situation is created, radiation sources are identified and even recovered, if necessary, despite the highest levels of radiation. At the second European Robotics Hackathon (EnRicH) in July 2019, robotics experts will practice for a critical situation at the Austrian nuclear power plant in Zwentendorf. Fortunately, this is only a simulated scenario but under real-world conditions.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE is one of 13 partners from the fields of emergency response, research and industry involved in the establishment of the German Rescue Robotics Center (A-DRZ) in Dortmund. The project, funded with 11.9 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), will officially kick off on 6 December. The mission of the new center is to promote the use of robots in rescue scenarios that pose excessive risks to emergency personnel.