… from Fraunhofer IPMS at the Sensor+Test trade fair in Nuremberg. The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is one of the leading research institutions for the development and testing of electronic, mechanical and optical components and devices and their integration into intelligent systems. The Fraunhofer IPMS will again be present at the SENSOR+TEST 2022 trade fair in Nuremberg. The institute will showcase some of its latest research and developments, such as a new technology for measuring gas mixtures based…

Sustainable, autonomous, intelligent, clean: From self-learning robots for use in fields and factories to state-of-the-art cleanroom technologies, methods for explaining machine learning and software tools for optimized production – Fraunhofer IPA will be showcasing a wealth of applications and services for automated production at automatica from 21 to 24 June 2022. After a break due to the coronavirus pandemic, the automatica trade fair will be returning this summer focusing on four clusters: “Digital Transformation”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Humans and Machines” and…

The remnants of a collapsed neutron star, called a pulsar, are magnetically charged and spinning anywhere from one rotation per second to hundreds of rotations per second. These celestial bodies, each 12 to 15 miles in diameter, generate light in the x-ray wavelength range. Researchers at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a new way spacecraft can use signals from multiple pulsars to navigate in deep space. “We can use star trackers to determine the direction a…

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently received samples of the lunar surface that have been curated in a freezer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston since Apollo 17 astronauts returned them to Earth in December 1972. This research is part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program, or ANGSA, an effort to study the samples returned from the Apollo Program in advance of the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon’s South Pole. However, the process of getting the samples from…

Adding a little oxygen to particle accelerator structures may make them more efficient and easier to build. The Science Scientists have developed a new theoretical model for preparing particle accelerator structures made of niobium metal. The model predicts how oxygen in the thin oxide layer on the surface of the niobium metal moves deeper into the metal. This happens as the oxide layer dissolves during gentle heating. This heating is part of how a particle accelerator is made and prepared…

When it comes to activities such as fighting forest fires, monitoring construction sites or providing multimedia services at sports and other mass events, a reliable, secure 5G campus network is often needed locally and temporarily to ensure maximum network coverage on the entire site. Thanks to the 5G+ Nomadic Node from the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS, this kind of non-public, temporary network can be set up at short notice in order, for instance, to connect emergency forces…

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare on April 30, 2022, peaking at 9:47 a.m. EDT. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.     This flare is classified as an X-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its…

To date, entrepreneurs have not put a lot of trust in artificial intelligence – many processes are still performed manually. An example of how artificial intelligence and control technology can be combined to create a completely trustworthy system is RoboGrinder: A grinding machine developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design IEM, which eliminates up to 40 percent of grinding processes. It can be seen at the joint Fraunhofer booth at the Hannover Messe 2022 from May 30 to…

Chirality, while not a rarity in the world of molecules, is nevertheless a special property. If a molecule is chiral (from the Greek word chiros = hand), it exists in two mirrored versions that are very similar but not identical – like two hands that can be folded together, but cannot be placed congruently on top of each other. This is why we speak of right-handed and left-handed molecules, or enantiomers, which means “opposite shape” in Greek. An international team…

The quality of industrial production processes is ensured by a large number of sensor-based individual inspections. This generates large amounts of data. However, until now, the information from the individual sensors has generally only been looked at in isolation. The AutoInspect solution from the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB overcomes this issue by linking all of the data to create a consolidated overview. Now, for the first time, linking the measured values is facilitating intelligent…

Today, public cloud systems can be used for outsourcing computationally intensive applications and storing large amounts of data. However, these systems are not designed for millisecond-accurate control of machines in production environments. They are not freely configurable and are difficult to connect to real-time-capable networks. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT has developed the Fraunhofer Edge Cloud in collaboration with other institutes and its partner German Edge Cloud to show companies how they can use local cloud systems to…

New materials with exotic magnetic features could enable the next generation of tiny, fast, energy-efficient electronic devices. Two-dimensional magnetic materials have been hailed as building blocks for the next generation of small, fast electronic devices. These materials, made of layers of crystalline sheets just a few atoms thick, gain their unique magnetic properties from the intrinsic compass-needle-like spins of their electrons. The sheets’ atomic-scale thinness means that these spins can be manipulated on the finest scales using external electric fields,…

Study identifies the physics that enables rapid magnetic explosions in space. When magnetic field lines of opposite directions merge, they create explosions that can release massive amounts of energy. On the sun, the merging of opposing field lines causes solar flares and coronal mass ejections, giant bursts of energy that can travel to Earth within a day. While the general mechanics of magnetic reconnection are known, researchers have struggled for over a half-century to explain the precise physics behind the…

Researchers demonstrate quantum computer memory resilient against errors. Quantum computing holds the potential to be a game-changing future technology in fields ranging from chemistry to cryptography to finance to pharmaceuticals. Compared to conventional computers, scientists suggest that quantum computers could operate many thousand times faster. To harness this power, scientists today are looking at ways to construct quantum computer networks. Fault-tolerant quantum memory, that responds well when hardware or software malfunctions occur, will play an important role in these networks….

NASA gives boost to Boston University-led effort. A Boston University–led team that has pioneered major advances in our understanding of the bubble protecting the solar system—and all life on Earth—has won a major new grant from NASA. The SHIELD (Solar wind with Hydrogen Ion Exchange and Large-scale Dynamics) DRIVE Science Center has been awarded a new five-year grant to continue advancing its breakthrough work in heliophysics, the study of how the sun influences and shapes the solar system. The funding will also…

For the past thirty years, the star β Pictoris has fascinated astronomers because it enables them to observe a planetary system in the process of formation. It is made up of at least two young planets, and also contains comets, which were detected as early as 1987. These were the first comets ever observed around a star other than the Sun. Now, an international research team headed by Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, CNRS researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris…