Press

They are in use everywhere but are yet rarely in the spotlight: home routers. At the latest since working from home has become a prevalent model in the Corona pandemic, not only private but also professional network traffic crosses these devices. Thus, there are plenty of reasons for scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE to take another look at the security of home routers after 2020. Their conclusion: the trend shows improvements compared to 2020, but there is still some work to be done.

Planning has already been underway since the summer: For the fourth time, the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE is organising the European Robotics Hackathon (EnRicH) together with the Austrian Armaments and Defence Technology Agency (ARWT). EnRicH will take place in June 2023. For about a week, teams from all over the world will come together near Vienna to check the current development status of their robotic systems in various emergency scenarios. The venue is as unusual as it is unique worldwide: the nuclear power plant (NPP) in Zwentendorf, which never went into operation.

The NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) has honoured Dr Michael Wunder, Head of the Research Department "Information Technology for Command and Control Systems" (ITF) at Fraunhofer FKIE, with the NATO STO Excellence Award 2022. The organisation recognises his outstanding contributions to the Information Systems Technology (IST) Panel, which the engineer and scientist most recently led for eight years as Vice-Chair and Chair.

Large-scale and prolonged power outages, waste piling up as waste disposal ceases to function, disruptions to water or gas supplies – successful cyber attacks on critical infrastructures, especially the power grid, can have serious consequences. Holistically conceived cyber security is necessary to prevent such scenarios. As part of the Fraunhofer Center for Digital Energy, Fraunhofer FKIE is working with partners to increase IT security and make the sector resilient to attacks.

First place in the Femtec Award 2022 for Macarena Varela, scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE. In the category »Innovation« she prevailed in a public voting and accepted the award from Femtec Managing Director Marion Zeßner at the Femtec summer party in Berlin. In the category »Leadership«, Prof. Dr. Angela Ittel, President of the TU Braunschweig, was awarded, and the prize in the category »Social Impact« went to the DokForum of the RWTH Aachen University.

Pilot training is a complex and cost-intensive task for the German Armed Forces. It is therefore an important goal to reduce costs and delays whenever possible. Especially during training, some pilot candidates suffer from symptoms of motion induced illness also known as motion sickness or kinetosis. Affected candidates then usually have to interrupt training in order to undergo desensitization training, causing significant costs and delays. To prevent such cases in the future, the German Armed Forces have launched a research project led by Fraunhofer FKIE and in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Universität der Bundeswehr München. The goal of the “Early Detection of Kinetosis Risk” (KiRis) project is to develop an AI and simulator-based method for the early detection of the motion sickness tendency of pilot candidates.

A prestigious award for the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE: The NATO Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence (CCOE) has presented the Wachtberg-based institute with the »CIMIC Award of Excellence 2021« in recognition of its extensive efforts to strengthen civil-military cooperation.

No event in the past decades has affected the people in the Ahr valley and parts of the Rhein-Sieg district as comprehensively and with such force as the flood disaster in July 2021. In view of the experiences of that devastating flood, the Fraunhofer FKIE has launched the "lokik" project: The aim is to develop a platform with the help of which an independent communication network and a local situation picture can be quickly established in the acute phase of a disaster.

The list of awardees is short, and yet a short time ago his name was on the list: Dr. Marc Adrat, the longstanding head of the Software Defined Radio research group at the Fraunhofer FKIE in Wachtberg has been recognized with the Wireless Innovation Forum’s (WInnF) 2021 President’s Award. With its award, the US-based forum honors Adrat’s activities on various committees and working groups within the WInnF.

How can autonomous ships be integrated into conventional maritime traffic? And which support can science offer traffic control centers in their efforts to monitor mixed shipping traffic in the future? These are the questions the LEAS project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is investigating.