“Who benefits from knowledge? And who uses knowledge?” asked Professor Stefan Witte (Board inIT and Provisional Vice-President for Research and Technology Transfer) when he welcomed the audience. Taking the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) as an example, Witte explained to 55 listeners how applicable research can be put into practice and that it also offers a certain added value for private life. “We conduct basis research on the one hand and short and midterm projects with a highly practical orientation on the other hand”, explained Witte. inIT, that just celebrated its 10th anniversary, is not just a research institute. It also makes a contribution to society.
Professor Carsten Röcker (Board inIT) is an expert in the field of Human-Machine-Interaction and among other things carries out research on assistance systems for assembly workplaces. First of all he gave an overview of Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, in his presentation. He provided tangible examples from the field of human-machine-interaction for the listeners and presented latest developments.
Intelligent assembly systems can support workers by e.g. virtual instructions that guide them through the assembly process. Complex work processes become controllable. Röcker emphasized the versatile application possibilities of these assistant systems. “We develop for example assistant systems for workers with disabilities so that they can be integrated into more demanding activities”, says Röcker.
In the course of the evening the practical orientation of research at OWL University became clear. Röcker and Witte vividly presented latest electro technical developments in the fields of “Smart Food Technology” and “Health”. From the winter semester 2017/18 onwards there will be a new course of study “Medicine and Health Technology” where the fields of Pharmaceutical Engineering and Biopharmaceutical Technology will be combined with Digitalization and Information Technology. At the end of the event guests could try out the research demonstrator “AR-Assembling Assistance”.