New research center for automation – salzburg.ORF.at
The new Josef Ressel Center for intelligent and safe industrial automation was opened with a ceremony. With a budget of 2.5 million euros, it is currently the largest single research project at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. The three companies from Salzburg and Upper Austria are providing one million euros. One of the partner companies is the automation system manufacturer Sigmatek: “It is simply important to guarantee high-quality training at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences,” said Managing Director Marianne Kusejko. “We need all the staff in this room. And it really is the driving force behind it.”
“It’s about intelligent and safe industrial automation. This is very, very important for us – because we already had some research projects in the field of cybersecurity in advance, and we also have ongoing ones – and would like to start a new course there,” emphasized Dominik Engel, Managing Director of the University of Applied Sciences.
New technical college research center for automation
“Necessity to think about the application”
Research is primarily carried out in a specially set up laboratory. In the coming months, an entire production line will be set up with machines from the company partners in order to be able to test the theoretical approaches in practice: “The industrial partners make us think about the application and not just examine the basics,” says doctoral student Martin Uray .
A total of six students, three doctoral students and three post-docs are now doing research to make industrial machines better: Stefan Huber, head of the research center, has exactly the goal: “To make industrial machines more intelligent and autonomous using assistance systems. Our vision is the digital assistant for industrial machines.”
Automatic assistants should increase productivity
The automatic assistants should make the operation of the industrial machines easier by providing assistance with monitoring to such an extent that ultimately fewer human staff are required, says Franz Enhuber from B&R Industrieautomation. Because this is “an area that has not yet been implemented so intensively in the industry. Assistance systems are very well known in commercial technology – driver assistance systems, language assistance systems. None of this is known in the industry to this extent. And we believe that this is a milestone in increasing productivity – above all in order to conserve the resources that we are all fighting very hard at the moment.”
For five years, the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences has been researching intelligent and safe assistants for industry. The results should help to alleviate the current shortage of skilled workers.