»EMILIE« – Smart Monitoring and Control of Processes Using Edge Computing

Many industrial plants have sophisticated sensor technology to control and monitor processes, the data from which is stored in their own cloud systems. In times of 5G and the Internet of Things, edge devices are becoming increasingly important. Here, data is processed decentrally, i.e. »at the edge of the network«, directly locally instead of in remote data centers. In the project »EMILIE« (Embedding Machine Intelligence Logic and IT Security into Edge Devices), we are working with our partners to improve the electronics used for this and the edge gateways. These are designed to securely and robustly capture information, process it based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and optimally control and monitor production processes.

Optimize Processes: Linking Measurement and Sensor Data With the Digital Twin

Edge gateways are the devices within the edge infrastructure. In the project – funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) – these include magnetostrictive sensors, high-resolution cameras and IOT gateways. Cement mills of the Gebrüder Pfeiffer SE serve as a use case in real production operations. Based on the technical measures to be implemented within the complex processes of the industrial plant, we measure concrete improvements – be it in throughput, energy efficiency or operational wear – in order to then optimize.

Our interdepartmental team stands for the mathematical competences and develops the appropriate AI methods. This means that we implement the Machine Learning (ML) methods that are used in signal and image data processing and are executed by the edge devices.

Within EMILIE, our work forms the interface between the application and the microelectronics to be developed. We extend the application of the devices by intelligent algorithms.

The project is scheduled to run for three years from 01.08.2022 to 30.06.2025. More information on our website: https://www.itwm.fraunhofer.de/emilie_en