With higher computing power and adapted AI training, the system developed at TU Graz can control several pedestrian crossings simultaneously and recognises people with limited mobility or strollers. The green phase can thus be extended as required. Since 2018, 21 intelligent traffic lights have been in use in Vienna. They recognise when pedestrians are approaching a crossing and automatically request green for them. This reduces the waiting time considerably in some cases. Now a team led by Horst Possegger from…
Roadway-related incidents are a leading cause of flood fatalities nationwide, but limited flood-reporting tools make it difficult to evaluate road conditions in real time. Existing tools — traffic cameras, water-level sensors and even social media data — can provide observations of flooding, but they are often not primarily designed for sensing flood conditions on roads and do not work in conjunction. A network of sensors could improve situational flood level awareness; however, they are expensive to operate at scale. Engineers…
This winter, the SLF tested a new system to better assess the risk of avalanches to traffic routes. The results are promising and should allow roads and railroad lines to be closed for shorter periods of time in the future when conditions are tight. Early morning at the beginning of April in Davos: Pia Ruttner-Jansen swings down the ski slope at Brämabüel – then suddenly turns right into open terrain. But not for a descent in the finest powder, because…
A new study by Prof Dr Guy Fournier and his team shows pioneering developments in European mobility. Even the coronavirus pandemic could not stop this ambitious project. What began as ‘AVENUE’ (Autonomous Vehicles to Evolve to a New Urban Experience) has developed into a milestone for the future of European mobility. Guy Fournier and his team, together with numerous European partners, have presented a comprehensive report outlining the results of the AVENUE project and the transition to the follow-up project…
After creating the world’s first self-organizing drone flock, researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary have now also demonstrated the first large-scale autonomous drone traffic solution. This fascinating new system is capable of far more than what could be executed with human pilots. The staff of the Department of Biological Physics at Eötvös University has been working on group robotics and drone swarms since 2009. In 2014, they created the world’s first autonomous quadcopter flock consisting of at least…
The possibility of hydrogen-powered flight means greater opportunities for fossil-free travel, and the technological advances to make this happen are moving fast. New studies from Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, show that almost all air travel within a 750-mile radius (1200 km) could be made with hydrogen-powered aircraft by 2045, and with a novel heat exchanger currently in development, this range could be even further. “If everything falls into place, the commercialisation of hydrogen flight can go really…
Together with industry partners, the University of Bremen has developed an innovative, AI-supported status monitoring system for port vehicles in the “KISS” research project. It uses state-of-the-art technologies to monitor the technical condition of vehicles in real time. In the joint research project “AI-Based Damage and Wear Detection System for Cloud-Based Condition Monitoring of Hybrid Container Vehicles” (“KI-Basiertes Schadens- und Verschleißerkennungssystem zur cloudbasierten Zustandsüberwachung von Hybrid-Container-Fahrzeugen“) – KISS for short – funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs…
CO2 Laser System Technology by Fraunhofer IWS Enables Efficient Joining of Large Volume Fiber Composite Aircraft Structures. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS has achieved decisive progress towards new ecological aircraft construction concepts. Within the EU programm Clean Sky 2 in the project “Multifunctional Fuselage Demonstrator” (MFFD), a team of researchers in Dresden provided proof of concept for the chipless joining of carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic component structures. The automated process approach developed joined the upper and lower…
In recent years, micro-optical projectors have become well established for automotive applications. These projectors enable cars to communicate with their surroundings. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF have now developed a dynamic indicator light that guarantees maximum visibility in a compact form, even under daylight conditions. The blinker will be presented for the first time at OPTATEC 2024 in Frankfurt (Main) from May 14 to 16. Principle of a conventional micro-optical projector based on apertures…
Graz University of Technology and the “Große schützen Kleine” association have investigated abdominal injuries in children following bicycle accidents as part of a Master’s thesis. Result? The design of the handlebars makes a big difference. In Austria, around 8,000 children and young people are injured in cycling accidents every year and subsequently treated in hospital. Around 600 of the injuries are directly attributable to contact with the handlebars, and around 19 per cent of these require hospitalisation. It is striking…
Non-rigid postal items with flexible packaging – such as poly bags – pose problems for logistics companies during automatic sorting. Thanks to modern simulation methods, there is now a widely applicable solution. Anyone who orders something online would like to have the parcel delivered reliably, quickly and undamaged. The sharp rise in the number of different types of mailing bags and mailing sacks in recent years – postal items with flexible packaging and a limited degree of dimensional stability –…
Products ordered online are often shipped in oversized cartons. The size of the overall package is frequently much larger than its contents. For example, a fragrance bottle is shipped in a shoebox-sized package, which has padding to fill the empty space. This is not sustainable. Helping to combat this issue is the CASTN optimization software created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML, which puts together the optimum order-to-carton combination for each customer’s order. Clever algorithms calculate…
The rising number of passengers and the associated air traffic are increasingly pushing the civil aviation system to its capacity limits. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) could play an important role in meeting the challenges of this development. As part of the KIEZ 4-0 project, fortiss has therefore developed concepts together with its project partners from aviation and science to enable the certification of the safety of AI-supported applications in aviation. The results of the project were presented at…
If 1 kilogram of hydrogen allows for approximately 100 kilometers of range in a car, a hydrogen tank for an electric motorcycle can also fit within the limited space of its design. A more challenging task is integrating a complete fuel cell system (which converts onboard hydrogen into electrical energy) into the frame construction. A German-Czech consortium of research institutions and manufacturing companies is now taking on this challenge: By the end of 2025, they will construct a fully functional…
Freight transportation is a backbone of the US economy — and a significant contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, freight accounts for nearly 10% of annual U.S. emissions,ISE Dan Doulet Faculty Fellow and Professor Xueping Li points out. Li and an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team have been awarded funding from the US Department of Energy to launch a first-of-its-kind, national-scale undertaking to address freight’s impact on climate change — and climate change’s impact on this vital sector. Funding from…
… with air quality in mind. Lehigh University CSE professor Yu Yang applies advanced machine learning techniques in NSF-funded research on traffic management and micromobility systems to reduce vehicle emissions and grow use of electric bikes and scooters. After a summer that broke all sorts of dismal records in terms of cataclysmic wildfires across North America, there is now an even greater awareness of poor air quality—its myriad health impacts and the overwhelming need for sustainable solutions. To that end, Yu…
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