– reliable and real-time thanks to Artificial Intelligence. What about predicting with high certainty whether a component meets the quality requirements even while a machining step is in progress? Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes it possible. The AI solutions developed at Fraunhofer IWU represent an improvement over previous in-line inspection systems, eliminating the need for time-consuming removal for testing purposes. Such quality forecasts during processing can be integrated into many industrial manufacturing processes, often in combination with existing, cost-effective sensors. However,…

… for sustainable & efficient aircraft production at SIAE 2023. Automated machining and assembly of large lightweight structures on a 1:1 scale The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Materials IFAM in Stade, Germany, will present automation solutions for sustainable aircraft production at the International Aerospace Exhibition SIAE (“Paris Air Show”) in Paris-Le Bourget from June 19 to 25, 2023, at the Fraunhofer AVIATION & SPACE booth on the joint booth of the German Aerospace Industries Association, BDLI (Hall 2C…

Microscopic imaging of magnetic fields, enabled by quantum sensing, allows the measurement of the unique magnetic fingerprint of objects. This opens the door for fundamentally new applications in various fields such as materials testing or biomedicine. Fraunhofer IAF has developed an innovative method using fast camera images in the form of an improved wide-field magnetometer. The system offers a unique compromise of sensitivity, resolution and speed. It will be presented at LASER World of QUANTUM 2023 as part of the…

Robots able to accomplish tasks after watching people perform them in any environment. New work from Carnegie Mellon University has enabled robots to learn household chores by watching videos of people performing everyday tasks in their homes. The research could help improve the utility of robots in the home, allowing them to assist people with tasks like cooking and cleaning. Two robots successfully learned 12 tasks including opening a drawer, oven door and lid; taking a pot off the stove;…

Princeton researchers used data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to deduce that a catastrophic event likely created the prolific Geminids meteoroid stream. The Geminids meteoroids light up the sky as they race past Earth each winter, producing one of the most intense meteor showers in our night sky. Mysteries surrounding the origin of this meteoroid stream have long fascinated scientists because, while most meteor showers are created when a comet emits a tail of ice and dust, the Geminids stem…

Quantum technology is expected to fundamentally change many key areas of society. Researchers are convinced that there are many more useful quantum properties and applications to explore than those we know today. A team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now developed open-source, freely available software that will pave the way for new discoveries in the field and accelerate quantum research significantly. Within a few decades, quantum technology is expected to become a key technology in…

There is a clear statistical correlation between global seismic activity and changes in the intensity of cosmic radiation recorded at the surface of our planet, potentially helping to predict earthquakes. Surprisingly, it exhibits a periodicity that escapes unambiguous physical interpretation. Strong earthquakes usually result in many human casualties and huge material losses. The scale of the tragedy could be significantly reduced if we had the ability to predict the time and place of such cataclysmic events. The CREDO project, initiated in…

Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon and is one of the most promising places to search for alien life.  Amid the Jovian system, Europa is of particular interest to scientists because of the strong evidence for nutrients, water and energy to potentially provide a habitable environment for some form of life beyond Earth. In addition, Europa is believed to be made up into four layers (from surface to center): an ice shell, salt water ocean, rocky mantle,…

Spin-squeezed atoms used to improve quantum measurements. Although today’s best optical atomic clocks can be used to make extremely precise measurements, they are still limited by the noise from the spin statistics of the many atoms they interrogate, known as quantum projection noise (QPN). But by leveraging the truly quantum nature of these systems, it is possible to entangle the atomic sample to circumvent this QPN limit. Now, researchers have reported the first direct observations of an optical-lattice clock operating…

… an anomalous phenomenon found. In a paper published in Nature Photonics, the research team from the Center for Quantum Information and Communication – Ecole polytechnique de Bruxelles of Université libre de Bruxelles, has found an unexpected counter-example to common knowledge on photon bunching. One of the cornerstones of quantum physics is Niels Bohr’s complementarity principle, roughly speaking the fact that objects may behave either like particles or like waves. These two mutually exclusive descriptions are well illustrated in the…

The discovery of a rare type of star system in two independent studies by the University of Warwick and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) provides new insights into the dynamo model’s predictions for stellar evolution. The new white dwarf pulsar, an extremely close binary system of a white dwarf star and a red dwarf star that together would fit inside the Sun, is only the second known of its kind. White dwarfs are extremely dense stellar remnants with…

Terahertz-to-visible light conversion for future telecommunications. A study carried out by a research team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), University of Exeter Centre for Graphene Science, and TU Eindhoven demonstrates that graphene-based materials can be used to efficiently convert high-frequency signals into visible light, and that this mechanism is ultrafast and tunable, as the team presents its findings in Nano Letters (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00507). These outcomes open the path to exciting applications in…

An international team including a University of Washington scientist has found that the water on one of Saturn’s moons harbors phosphates, a key building block of life. The team led by the Freie Universität Berlin used data from NASA’s Cassini space mission to detect phosphates in particles ejected from the ice-covered global ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Phosphorus, in the form of phosphates, is vital for all life on Earth. It forms the backbone of DNA and is part of…

“Chiral bose-liquid state” is a new phase of matter, according to UMass Amherst professor. A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan, recently announced in the journal Nature that they have discovered a new phase of matter. Called the “chiral bose-liquid state,” the discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world. Under everyday conditions, matter can be a solid, liquid or gas. But once you venture beyond…

… for high-precision quantum frequency converters. Quantum frequency converters enable changing the frequency or wavelength of photons in a targeted manner, to transmit them with low loss in fiber optic networks and to build quantum networks. As a pump source for high-precision quantum frequency converters, Fraunhofer IAF is developing single-mode semiconductor disk lasers in the wavelength range from 2 to 2.2 µm in the BMBF-funded project HIFI. At LASER World of PHOTONICS 2023, Fraunhofer IAF will present a disk laser…

A new AI-based approach for controlling autonomous robots satisfies the often-conflicting goals of safety and stability. In the film “Top Gun: Maverick,” Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, is charged with training young pilots to complete a seemingly impossible mission — to fly their jets deep into a rocky canyon, staying so low to the ground they cannot be detected by radar, then rapidly climb out of the canyon at an extreme angle, avoiding the rock walls. Spoiler alert: With Maverick’s help, these…