The Darmstadt Technical University is drawing attention to itself at HANNOVER MESSE with its "SweepingFab", a liquid "mini-broom". "Our manufacturing process, which we are patenting, uses hydrodynamic instabilities in stacked liquid layers to produce passive optical elements such as micro-lens arrays and fiber optic electrical cables in a time and cost effective manner without resorting to standard processes such as photolithography," states the project description. The process can be observed and adjusted in realtime, and it is also suitable for manufacturing high-quality products in small batches.

This Frankfurt project is a part of the Hessen group pavilion that is returning to Hall 2 in 2016. For this comeback, the Hessen Trade & Invest GmbH (HTAI) has brought together numerous examples of the application-oriented research conducted at the German state's universities.

The University of Darmstadt (h_da) is bringing its development WheelScout to Hannover. This navigation aid, recently equipped with voice control, helps physically-challenged wheelchair drivers find their way around buildings, both inside and outside.

In addition, the h_da computer science department has found a way to securely store data in the cloud: The open, platform-independent, decentralized communication technology AChord uses end-to-end encryption technology so that messages and data can be stored and transmitted with no unauthorized access. Every file is broken apart and filed in different hubs around the world.

Software engineers at the 16 department at the University of Kassel are presenting a component of their research project BigEnergy in Hall 2 which applies big data prognoses to renewable energy: The MDBDA.org Tool Suite graphically compiles big and realtime data in a web-based editor to generate the analyses.

A group from the computer science and engineering department at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (UAS) around Prof. Thordis Michalke is bringing a "lung gas analyzer" to Hannover.

A "hardware accelerated sensor node" is another project at the TU Darmstadt: The heterogenous HaLoMote architecture (hardware-accelerated low-power mote) uses a FPGA to accelerate the hardware of data aggregation algorithms along with a wireless system with an integrated micro-controller for network management and overriding control of the applications. To manage energy efficiently, the HaLoMote uses a persistent configuration storage system. "In addition to the accelerated calculation of application-specific data aggregation, the heterogenous platform is especially good for efficiently implementing complex encryption and error correction," according to TU Darmstadt. This makes it "well prepared for the requirements demanded by the Internet of Things."