Zukunft.Lab.Schwarzwald: Innovation Meets Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
The events organized by Zukunft.Lab.Schwarzwald—which typically last two hours and take place once a month on Tuesdays or Thursdays from 4 to 6 p.m.—highlight practical innovations and open up new opportunities for collaboration. The goal is to facilitate networking among regional companies and research institutes in the Southern Upper Rhine region. Following a welcome and brief introduction to Zukunft.Raum.Schwarzwald, the program always includes a presentation by the respective institute on current research topics and common forms of collaboration with industry, followed by a tour of the lab and a meet-and-greet. The main target audience is business representatives, but other interested parties are also welcome.
The first event takes place on January 29 at the Institute for Advanced Biomechanik and Motion Studies (IBMS) at Hochschule Offenburg. The focus will be on Biomechanik in work, health, and sports. The IBMS quantifies the performance and stress on the musculoskeletal system in daily life and sports and researches human movement in all its complexity. Topics at the IBMS range from fall prevention and optimized joint loads to improving human-technology interaction. In the field of sports, the focus is on performance enhancement, injury prevention, and rehabilitation. In addition, the IBMS develops innovative methods for motion analysis outside the lab and uses functional statistics as well as extensive datasets to gain valuable insights for research and practice.
The second event will take place on February 24 at the Work-Life Robotics Institute (WLRI) at Hochschule Offenburg. The WLRI researches and develops cost-effective and transferable robotics applications in industrial settings. At the interface between humans and robotics, application-oriented research shapes effective interactions within socio-technological systems. The research focuses on lean-oriented industrial and collaborative robotics, additively manufactured components, and care robotics.
The tour continues on March 26 at the Institute for Unmanned Aerial Systems (IUAS) at Hochschule Offenburg. The IUAS focuses its application-oriented research and development on unmanned aerial systems as well as radar and antenna technologies. At the IUAS, advanced drone robotics is being developed that goes beyond mere flight operations and offers innovative solutions and applications for numerous industries. The institute has excellent laboratory facilities that enable, among other things, EMC measurements, dielectric material characterization, and high-frequency measurements above 100 GHz.
On April 21, the tour will then proceed to the Institute for Sustainable Energy Systems (INES) at Hochschule Offenburg. The research groups based at INES—Intelligent Energy Networks (IEN), Energy Systems and Energy Economics (EEW), and Energy in Buildings and Districts (E2G) are developing data- and model-based methods for resilient and climate-neutral energy systems—ranging from buildings and neighborhoods to microgrids and the municipal level. They analyze and optimize decentralized energy structures and develop scenarios and decision-making tools for stakeholders in industry, local governments, and politics. In addition, they address the strategic integration of energy management processes within organizations and explore innovative solutions for energy-efficient buildings and neighborhoods, such as through smart operating strategies and the integration of heat pumps and district heating networks.
The program also includes visits to Fraunhofer IPM on May 21 and to Hahn-Schickard on June 21.
Due to limited space, interested parties are asked to register for the individual institute visits on the IHK website!