Science
AI, energy, light – projects for the Future Prize presented
The nomination for the German Future Prize is already considered an award Photo
© Christophe Gateau/dpa
Three research teams have been nominated for the German Future Prize. The focus is on future technologies such as AI – and energy savings.
Intelligent headlights, an imaging AI and energy-saving chips are the projects that are entering the race for the German Future Prize 2024. Three research teams presented their developments nominated for the prize, which are already marketable, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
The teams come from Bavaria, Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will present the prize, worth 250,000 euros, on November 27 in Berlin.
Light becomes intelligent
Osram International GmbH from Regensburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) in Berlin developed a “digital light” in the form of individually operable LED pixels.
One application: a car headlight that uses intelligent light distribution to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. It also projects pictograms onto the road, such as a snowflake when there is a risk of frost. This opens up further applications in the area of augmented reality (AR).
Democratizing Generative AI
With “Stable Diffusion”, an imaging AI has been developed at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich that transforms commands into images. To promote the democratization of the technology, the software has been made open source and is not patented.
For the Future Prize project, the LMU chair of Professor Björn Ommer is working with Düsseldorf-based Nyris GmbH, which offers a visual search function. Stable Diffusion can be used to generate photorealistic images from design data sets. For example, defective parts in technical systems could be quickly identified in this way.
Energy-saving chip for wind turbines and trains
Infineon Technologies AG from Munich has developed a power semiconductor module with the Chemnitz University of Technology that is designed to switch electricity in high voltage classes more reliably, faster and with greater power than before, thus contributing to the energy transition. The energy-saving chip made of silicon carbide with a new type of copper contact can be used anywhere where a lot of electricity needs to be regulated in a fraction of a second.