Participation is by invitation only and guests bring specific questions from their day-to-day work to the workshops. This year, representatives from companies such as Schaeffler, Bosch, Arburg, Mann+Hummel, KEBA, Dürr, Jost, KSB, Unchained Robotics, Hawe Hydraulik, Lenze, Leuze and many more discussed their topics.

PowerPoint slides are taboo, the participants scribble and discuss on flipcharts and paper, ideas are developed and discarded. The small groups then work on their topics together with the help of AI research luminaries. Three working rounds of 90 minutes each were on the agenda this year and HANNOVER MESSE was able to listen to what the industry is up to.

Prof. Dr. Johannes Brandstetter is considered one of the beacons of hope in basic industrial research. Brandstetter studied in Vienna, went to CERN, then to Microsoft Research, now teaches at the JKU Linz and is driving forward the field of AI-based simulation at the Austrian company NXAI. "We generalize. We show the network many simulations - not just the melting simulation, for example, but also use other simulations from other domains. Fortunately, nature can be described by a few terms such as convection and diffusion, which alternate over and over again in different domains. This increases the quality across different domains," explained Brandstetter.

The background: Every day, thousands and thousands of computing hours are spent on modeling turbulence, simulating fluid or air flows, heat transfer in materials, traffic flows and much more. Many of these processes follow similar basic patterns, but require different and specialized software to simulate them. Even worse, for different parameter settings, the costly full-length simulations have to be run from scratch. "Deep learning techniques are poised to develop models that perform simulations in seconds rather than days or even weeks. The hardware is capable of processing high-resolution inputs on an industrial scale, for example 3D meshes or images, and therefore creates the conditions for training deep learning models on a large scale," adds Brandstetter.

The second working group focused on industrial AI use cases with Prof. Dr. Marco Huber from Fraunhofer IPA. Huber and his team are among the most renowned institutes in Europe when it comes to the application of AI technologies in production. The team from Stuttgart supports numerous industrial companies with their AI projects. Huber discussed with the participants how companies can scale, deployment strategies on the store floor, foundation models, but also new requirements for the workforce, knowledge management in the company and Europe's assets in the AI competition.

Europe was also the keyword in the third round. Thomas Doms and Dr. Bernhard Nessler from Trustifai worked with the participants to develop certification strategies for AI and products. The two experts provided information on legal frameworks such as the AI Act and the Cyber Resilience Act. In addition, both presented frameworks and templates for a certification strategy in the company. And one participant was able to have his certification questions clarified in Zug am Arlberg.