SAFIR goes digital: Virtual network meeting and advisory board meeting on 22.10.2020

This year's network meeting was held under the motto "AI in vehicle safety". After the welcoming address by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Suchandt, SAFIR's partnership spokesperson, a keynote speech by Prof. Dr.-Ing. In his presentation, Mr. Botsch first addressed the modern era of AI and explained, among other things, the difference between strong and weak AI, how learning from data works and where the use of AI in vehicle safety makes sense. The keynote speech was rounded off by opening the technical discussion. Here it was the participants' own turn: They were able to exchange views on a total of five key questions in so-called breakout rooms. This interactive session was concluded with the presentation of the results in the plenum.

Under the program item Research@thi, various research and network facilities of the THI, such as the AWARE Center, the CARISSMA Research and Test Center, the new AININ Institute and the THI research project Man on the Move (MiB), presented themselves in short pitches.

Like the network meeting, the SAFIR advisory board meeting was also conducted virtually. In a short wrap-up, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Suchandt summarized the past SAFIR year and gave an outlook on the future intensification phase of the research partnership. The cluster leaders followed this approach and reported in a focused manner from the respective sub-projects, which milestones have been successfully reached so far, which steps in the project plan are still being worked on until the end of the build-up phase and which research priorities have been set for the intensification phase. The program of the advisory board meeting was complemented by the presentation of Prof. Dr. Ondrej Vaculin and the presentation of the R&D project IN2Lab, which is developing a system for safeguarding automated driving functions. Key components of the protection system are sensors on the infrastructure side for detecting the environment, Car2X communication for networking the vehicles, the infrastructure and the back end, and Mission Control for monitoring and control.

On our own behalf: The SAFIR research partnership will enter its intensification phase starting in 2021. A closing event is currently planned to conclude the build-up phase. We would be happy to involve you and your company in the planning and implementation. Do you have any ideas, wishes or suggestions as to how we should design the event or would you like to present your company at this event? Then please contact Sonja Kupfer directly (sonja.kupfer@thi.de). We look forward to your ideas and contributions!