When a child runs out onto the road, the average human driver takes 1.6 seconds to hit the brake pedal. The reaction time is cut to 0.5 seconds for automated vehicles fitted with radar/lidar sensors and a camera system. But at a speed of 50 km/h, that still means that the vehicle will continue for…

Sensors in autonomous vehicles have to be extremely reliable, since in the future motorists will no longer constantly monitor traffic while underway. In the past these sensors were subjected to arduous road tests. The new ATRIUM testing device from Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR now makes it possible to move…

Voice assistants are becoming more and more prevalent in every area of our lives. At this year’s Hannover Messe, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS are teaming up with au-tomaker Volkswagen to showcase a new voice interaction system that caters to domain-specific knowledge. Drawing on the techniques of “informed”…

In the coming years, the European Space Agency (ESA) will be launching a series of new weather satellites that will be able to measure important meteorological data, such as precipitation, water vapor or temperature, better than ever before. The heart of these measuring devices consists of extremely sensitive microwave amplifiers that were developed at the…

Transmitting the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds by radio transmission is incredibly fast – and a new world record in wireless data transmission. With a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second over a distance of 37 kilometers, a collaborative project with the participation of researchers from the University of Stuttgart…

Digital radio makes spherics and crackling interference in radio broadcast a thing of the past. New technologies from Fraunhofer IIS make it possible for digital radio to replace analogue short and medium wave broadcasting around the world. Even local FM transmissions are being converted to digital. As a result, Digital radio listeners benefit from clear…

Nowadays it is impossible to imagine industry without robots. Safety laser scanners mostly safeguard dangerous areas and protect people from collisions. But optical sensors have their limitations, for instance when plastic surfaces, dust or smoke obstruct their line of sight. Fraunhofer researchers have developed a new, high-frequency radar scanner that cuts through these obstacles. It…