Projects and Research

The overarching goal of PowerizeD is to develop groundbreaking technologies for digitalised and intelligent power electronics that enable sustainable and resilient energy generation, transmission and utilisation. PowerizeD increases the degree of mechanical and electrical integration of control, driver and switching functionality within a single component, enabling the joint optimisation of all power switch functions for the first time.

The use of new circuit models, advanced control strategies and artificial intelligence enables the integration of parts of the control loop, resulting in robust and reliable operation. To facilitate the sharing of data along the value chain, PowerizeD employs the novel approach of federated learning. This collaborative optimisation of specific compact models and neural networks

Powerized

Global industry has undergone radical developments, from manual manufacturing processes to industrial digitalisation and the introduction of robots, which are designed down to the smallest detail and require a deep understanding of complex products.
Industrial developments have so far been heavily influenced by electronic components and systems (ECS). In the course of these industrial (r)evolutions, ECS have evolved from simple vacuum tubes to highly integrated circuits, microprocessors, sensors, actuators and advanced communication technologies.
In the field of mobility in particular, ECS have contributed to major advances to date. For over a decade, perception-based solutions have been available for the mass market, preventing collisions and driving forward vehicle automation, for example. Furthermore, mobility is undergoing a profound transformation driven by a combination of factors ranging from environmental concerns to technological advances. This transformation is crucial for addressing challenges such as climate change, urban congestion and the need for more efficient and sustainable mobility solutions on the path towards zero-fatality mobility

“Integrated Components for Complexity Control in Affordable Electrified Cars” – Promoting electric mobility by improving the reliability and fault tolerance of highly automated electric vehicles.

Server-based services delivered via mobile networks to optimise the range of electric vehicles.

The EU project 3Ccar was launched on 1 June 2015. OTH-AW is collaborating on this European Commission-funded project with almost 50 project partners under the leadership of Infineon. The aim of the project is to raise electric mobility to a new technical level and increase the market relevance of these vehicles. Project partners include Siemens, BMW, Daimler, AVL, TNO and NXP, as well as the universities of Dresden, Graz and Brno and the Fraunhofer Society. The project will run for three years.

The overall objective of the 3CCar project is to improve control of increased complexity by applying new approaches to nanotechnological components. This is intended to reduce failure rates and vehicle costs.

3CCar pursues two parallel societal goals: meeting social needs and maintaining global leadership. The project has significant implications for Europe’s innovation-driven industries through the creation of highly skilled jobs. The development and deployment of new capabilities introduced by electronics, components and systems are the key factors in achieving these objectives, as they will equip vehicles and transport systems with the necessary intelligence whilst simultaneously building on and further enhancing the established strengths of European industry.

The objectives of the 3Ccar project can be divided into six groups:

1. Competitive advantages through more complex semiconductor-based systems
2. Cost reduction of automotive components
3. Managing complexity through architectures enables new subdivisions
4. Reduction of vehicle maintenance costs
5. Getting more electric vehicles on the roads, thereby replacing combustion engines
6. Improving the carbon footprint of transport

The East Bavarian University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden (OTH-AW), together with its project partners, will develop an extension to C2I (Car-to-Infrastructure) communication via an LTE connection specifically for electric vehicles. The network of electric vehicles is to be expanded via a 4G connection with high data rates and will be implemented using an LTE module connected to the network. Within the project, the LTE connection will be evaluated with regard to the appropriate data link to the vehicle environment. The electric vehicle’s on-board network is accessed via various automotive interfaces, such as Ethernet or CAN, whereby the architecture must take into account the various safety aspects relating to communication between the electric vehicle and its environment.

ADACORSA is set to supply the technical components (hardware, software, expertise and procedures) required to operate semi-autonomous drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in both uncontrolled (very low-level) airspace and controlled airspace, all under a pricing policy that is unprecedented. This is intended to prepare German and European partners for the use of semi-automated or fully autonomous drones in BVLOS operations, so that they can shape this market with new business models in the future.
OTH-AW focuses on drone communication in relation to BVLOS scenarios, and in particular on the two aspects of reliability (Reliability, Safety) and security (Security). To contribute to reliable communication between drones and operators, OTH-AW is researching and developing models for predicting mobile network connection quality. Based on real-world airborne measurements, various algorithms – from the field of machine learning or geo-based methods – are to be developed and evaluated for their suitability for the prediction models. The models developed will then be utilised by the Dutch project partner AnyWi to enable the early selection of the optimal mobile network connection (provider) for sending data packets within a multimodal communication architecture, based on QoS (Quality of Service) predictions. Secondly, OTH-AW is investigating the application of the predictive models to calculate QoS-optimised flight trajectories in order to increase robustness against potential communication failures caused by handover or dead spots.
The second aspect of OTH-AW’s contribution to ADACORSA aims to improve the security of so-called ‘Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs)’, in which (autonomous) unmanned aerial vehicles communicate, through research into authentication and trust management systems. To this end, OTH-AW will develop and demonstrate a high-performance trust management system for FANETs, drawing on insights from the automotive sector and other mobile ‘ad-hoc’ networks. In close cooperation with the French project partner CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies), the aim is to investigate the trust-based security aspects of FANETs and develop potential solutions.

Projekt ADACORSA

Development of European systems and components for ECS 2030 vehicles to support mass-market production. All of this is based on the principles of the Green Deal.

Objectives of the AI4CSM project

• Development of European systems and components for ECS 2030 vehicles to support mass-market production. All of this is based on the principles of the Green Deal.
• Development of electronic components and systems for connected and shared mobility using trustworthy AI.
• A cross-sectoral mission encompassing the automotive and semiconductor sectors as well as society.
• Automation, electrification, standardisation and digitalisation through new, AI-driven vehicles

Projekt AI4CSM

Given that European industry currently lags behind other parts of the world in the integration of artificial intelligence, AI4DI (ArtificialIntelligenceforDigitisingIndustry) focuses on identifying and implementing specific use cases for AI in the digitalisation of industry. A key focus here is the transfer of machine learning approaches from the cloud to the application field (Edge), which encompasses manufacturing processes, mobility and robotics.

Across a total of seven objectives, the partners are examining various facets of AI. These include, amongst others, the areas of distributed artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration and components for the Internet of Things. These objectives are mapped onto five areas of work, including the automotive industry, semiconductor manufacturing and transport.

As a key area of focus for the use of AI, OTH-AW, in collaboration with VTT, Linkker and Murata, is investigating the use of AI in the field of Mobility as a Service.

Projekt AI4DI

The AUTOSAFE research project (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Media and Computer Science) was launched in September 2005 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project ran until March 2009. The overarching aim of this initiative was to investigate a modular system for integrated road safety.
AUTOSAFE was carried out by Siemens VDO Automotive, Porsche Engineering Group, Infineon Technologies and Siemens Restraint Systems. The Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Amberg-Weiden University of Applied Sciences primarily supported the project’s software development in the areas of AutoSAR, image processing, pre-crash systems and wireless connections.

Autosafe

The ECSEL JU project AutoDrive focuses on applied research into the improvement of electrical components, systems and architectures in the field of autonomous driving, specifically in the areas of fault detection, fault tolerance and fault correction. The aim is to use the results to make mobility safer, more affordable and more user-friendly.

The research objective is being addressed across a total of ten value chains, with a focus on autonomous driving (SC1) and highly automated driving (SC2). The remaining chains address sub-disciplines, including vehicle communication, environmental modelling and predictive maintenance.

OTH-AW is undertaking tasks across various value chains, including highlyautomateddriving (SAE Level 4) and safe, secure and lowlatencycommunication.

The focus of the work in SC2 is on the bus demonstrator, which is being developed in collaboration with the Spanish institute Technalia. The aim is to drive in a highly automated manner on a selected test track in Málaga, Spain.

OTH-AW will provide a hardware platfo

Projekt Autodrive

Holistic Energy Management for Third- and Fourth-Generation Electric Vehicles
eDAS stands for efficiency powered by smart Design, meaningful Architecture and connected Systems.
As part of a collaboration with the ‘iCompose’ and “Incobat” projects, the ‘eDAS’ project aims to research a technical solution for increasing the range and reliably predicting the remaining range of third- and fourth-generation electric vehicles. The “eDAS” project has been running since 1 October 2013 and will last for 36 months. It was proposed to the European Union and approved by a consortium of 15 European partners from research and industry.
The main focus of the project lies in the networking and intelligent use of the various energy sources within an electric vehicle. The individual partners are supplying hardware and software components which, together, are intended to increase the range of a future electric vehicle and improve the quality of range prediction. In developing the necessary interfaces, the project is collaborating with the “iCompose” and “Incobat” projects to utilise a common hardware and software platform, thereby reducing the subsequent effort required for system integration.
OTH Amberg-Weiden’s remit lies in the development of software modules to be deployed on the vehicle’s central control unit. The focus is on developing an Energy Resource Scheduler (ERS), which forms a software layer of the Energy Management System (EMS). Together with the hardware to be developed, as well as the application layers of the controller software, the aim is to establish a system for intelligent, route- and usage-dependent energy management within the vehicle.
Prof. Dr Höß is responsible for the project at OTH Amberg-Weiden. The work is being carried out by Ms Lepke and Mr Waigel.

EDAS

The project was submitted to ENIAC in July 2010 by a consortium of around 30 European partners. The project was approved in spring 2011 and has been running since 1 July 2011. It aims to develop a fully electric powertrain for use in cars.
The particular challenges of the project lie in the development of novel, energy-efficient components and the control of their interaction to ensure high safety standards. Future electric vehicles must remain functional even if some faults occur and must at least allow the vehicle to be safely moved out of the traffic zone. The focus of the research is shifting from the level of individual components towards the overall integration of subsystems into a fail-safe, reliable and highly efficient drive system.
The tasks of OTH Amberg-Weiden in this context involve software development for an automotive control unit from Infineon, focusing on signal acquisition and processing from sensors in the rotor of a completely new electric motor, the skilful use of redundancies, and the integration of partner software modules on this platform in collaboration with the respective partners. The project is primarily led by Ms Lepke and supervised by Prof. Höß.

The KI-ASIC project aims to transfer neuromorphic electronics from fundamental academic research into automotive applications and provide solutions to the key challenges of autonomous driving. The project thus makes an important contribution to boosting the innovative strength of the German automotive industry and Germany as a business location.

Objectives of the KI-ASIC project:

• Use of neuromorphic processor architectures for radar processing utilising Deep Neural Networks (DNN) and Spiking Neural Networks (SNN)
• Acquisition, processing and evaluation of radar signals as a data basis for the development of AI-supported neuromorphic processor architectures
• Reduction of the energy balance for radar sensors
• First application of neuromorphic processors (SpiNNaker 2) in the automotive sector
• Gaining knowledge in the field of coding and application of SNNs

Dynamically adapted, reliable mobile communications for automated driving

Vehicles with automation levels 3–5 and fault-tolerant all-round perception, measurement and prediction of mobile network quality whilst driving, and evaluation of mobile data connections.

At higher levels of automation (Level 4 and, in particular, Level 5), the driver is not available as a fallback option, meaning that the automation system must be capable of handling safety-critical situations independently. At these levels of automation, fault tolerance is crucial throughout the entire automation chain, from sensing and planning right through to execution. This is precisely where PRYSTINE comes in: PRYSTINE aims to realise a fault-tolerant all-round perception system (Fail-operational Urban Surround perceptION, FUSION) for automation levels 3–5, based on robust radar and lidar sensor fusion. The control functions to be developed in the project are intended to enable safe automated driving in urban environments as well as on rural roads.

Prystine’s objectives:

• Vehicles with automation levels 3–5 and fault-tolerant all-round perception for both urban and rural environments.
• Measurement and prediction of mobile network quality whilst driving.
• Evaluation of mobile data connections.
• Reduction of latency in mobile network-based communication for automated driving in rural environments.
• Robust C-V2X communication for safe automated driving.

The sub-project at OTH Amberg-Weiden aims to ensure the highest possible transmission speed, with maximum reliability and security of the mobile connection between the backend and the vehicle, depending on the quality of the mobile connection.

Projekt Prystine