The Toyota Technological Institute (TTIJ) in Nagoya is considered one of the leading universities in Japan. The institute focuses on mechanical systems engineering, electronics and information science as well as materials science and engineering. Topics that are naturally also of great interest to the Institute for Industrial Information Technology (inIT). While the inIT's competencies lie particularly in the area of applied research, research at the TTIJ mostly takes place in the basic area. A cooperation of the two research institutes is therefore the logical step and a good mutual complementation can be seen from the beginning. Here, the collaboration goes beyond theoretical arrangements from afar. "In 2019, a total of seven visits by scientific staff from inIT to Japan have taken place. For one to two months, they then worked on joint projects with TTIJ on site," reports Professor Carsten Röcker, deputy institute director at inIT.
One of them was Andreas Besginow, a research assistant at inIT since 2017. His research focuses on assistance systems. These are designed to support employees in industrial assembly processes. His goal is to make them more intelligent by automatically pointing out an error in the assembly process or in the sequence of steps. During his time at the Toyota Technological Institute, he was able to get action recognition implemented based on videos to capture assembly steps. "My time in Japan was extremely beneficial for my work and research. I was able to draw on the know-how of the scientists there and gain new insights," says Besginow happily. A corresponding demonstrator is expected to be completed as a prototype later this year. However, the stay abroad not only proved to be progress for his work, it was also a great experience for him personally. "My time in Japan was a culturally very exciting experience. Life and work there is very different from what it is here in Germany. There, people work six days a week and like to work late into the evening. Even after work, the scientific staff and professors spend a lot of time together and go out to eat, for example. You can tell that a lot of value is placed on work and contact with colleagues," Besginow reports.
Andreas Besginow is one of the examples of why such an exchange is definitely worthwhile. "We definitely want to continue the cooperation in the form of joint projects this year. It is already firmly planned that two of our scientific employees will be at TTIJ for one month each. In addition, a jointly supervised master's thesis with Professor Ukita from TTIJ is also currently underway," Röcker reports. The main goal of the collaboration is to research supports for industrial work and to provide assistance and information.