Research and development

Digitising the port industry to a greater extent

More and more industries are relying on digital technologies to make existing processes more efficient or to develop new business models. Innovative technologies are also opening up new optimisation potential for sea and inland ports. However, digitalisation in ports is still in its infancy: although a lot of data is already being collected from operational processes, there is still great potential for using this data to increase efficiency. The responsible managers are faced with the challenge of identifying suitable individual solutions from the multitude of offers already available. The international research project I2PANEMA has created reference architectures for this and shown how existing processes can be improved using data analyses, particularly in conjunction with the Internet of Things. A reference architecture was developed for rolling out industrial IoT applications in harbours. I2PANEMA stands for Intelligent, IoT-based Port Artefacts Communication, Administration and Maintenance.

Data creates insights

Technologies such as the Internet of Things generate large amounts of data that can be used, for example, to control systems or optimise processes. Supplementary data analyses create the basis for realising new data-based services and assistance functions in the port environment. The project has shown how companies can use this data to implement innovative measures to control traffic, reduce emissions or optimise energy efficiency. I2PANEMA also aimed to help integrate existing and often heterogeneous IT systems. Only through optimised data exchange is it possible to efficiently drive forward digitalisation in the port environment.

European project

The I2PANEMA project also developed concrete scenarios that clearly demonstrate the benefits that can be achieved through digitalisation. The projects included, for example, applications in the areas of noise reduction, traffic management, energy consumption, emissions monitoring and localisation, such as

• Connecting the "digital logbook" in the harbour office for further data collection, e.g. for predictive maintenance
• Active noise control
• Parking management and sequencing of lorries in the port
• Routing and sequencing of lorries in the port
• Optimising the loading of cars in the port
• Supporting the inspection of ships with underwater drones in the harbour
• Reduction of fine dust pollution in the harbour

A number of ports, IT and logistics companies and research institutions from several European countries took part in I2PANEMA as part of the EUREKA ITEA cluster programme. The consortium leaders were the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics and Materna, both based in Dortmund. Materna's experts contribute tried-and-tested expertise in digitalisation and experience with the Internet of Things to the project. The project was completed at the end of 2022. The financing of around 5 million euros in the German sub-project was covered by the participating companies' own funds as well as funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The transnational cooperation should also help to make the participating German seaports and inland ports active partners in the formation of a future international smart port network. This would enable the companies to optimise existing logistics chains, shorten freight transit times and reduce emissions in freight transport at the same time.

Innovative fields of application for augmented reality in inland ports and seaports

The digitalisation of the working world does not stop at inland ports and seaports. InnoPortAR therefore investigated the extent to which the use of augmented reality (AR) can support work processes in inland and seaports. Use cases were analysed in various test environments. Augmented reality involves augmenting reality with computer-generated information. Materna was involved in the project with its expertise in the field of augmented reality. InnoPortAR stands for "Innovative fields of application for augmented reality in inland and seaports".

The research partners investigated content-related and technical issues relating to the practical use of AR in the port environment. These include content-related aspects, such as the limits of the displayed content due to the available field of vision and how much information can be meaningfully displayed without overburdening employees. Neural networks were used to recognise objects in the viewer's field of vision. However, the focus was also on technical issues relating to the conditions in the port environment and the behaviour of the smart glasses in different lighting and weather situations.

The main research questions concerned cognitive ergonomics and information presentation, the fields of application of the smart glasses and input options in the area of port technology as well as machine learning.

The use of AR can help to optimise handling and stuffing processes in the port environment and reduce the workload of employees through coordinated human-technology interaction. Overall, the project supported the introduction of innovative technologies into the port environment and ensured greater IT utilisation within the logistics chains. The use of AR not only makes jobs more attractive, but also enables German ports to take on a pioneering role in Europe, thereby further strengthening their key function for the German economy. The use cases included, for example, the maintenance and servicing of handling equipment and port infrastructure, the identification of loading units during handling, load securing when loading in containers and support for interface control in trimodal terminals.

The consortium for the research project comprised the following partners: Duisburger Hafen (overall coordinator), Materna SE and Materna TMT GmbH, the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics and the Fraunhofer Centre for Maritime Logistics and Services CML. Other project partners were Haeger & Schmidt Logistics GmbH, Eurogate Technical Services GmbH and Container Terminal Dortmund GmbH. The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure funded InnoPortAR.

The project was completed in autumn 2021.

More about the InnoPortAR research project

Linking municipal, regional and national data platforms

In the coming years, mobility will increasingly adapt to the individual needs of travellers, for example through new on-demand mobility services and autonomous vehicles in private and public transport. These new services are based on real-time data about traffic, travellers' needs and the availability of services. The secure and sovereign provision and protected utilisation of this data in distributed systems will be decisive success factors for the mobility of tomorrow.

MobiDS initiated the development of the Mobility Data Space, which was to be established as a mobility data ecosystem with the involvement of the Mobility Data Marketplace (MDM) of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) and other municipal transport data platforms. New municipal traffic data and nationwide mobility data were to be developed and made available for secure and sovereign processing on the platforms, which were expanded to include data space concepts. The municipal platforms were to be linked to the MDM so that regional data could also be made available and utilised at a national level.

In the project, the MDM and other municipal platforms were further developed to support data-based services. To this end, they were expanded to include a secure and protected execution environment for services and data apps in which mobility data can be provided and refined while guaranteeing data sovereignty. In this way, more sensitive mobility data such as floating car data (FCD) could be utilised for the first time. The MDM and the municipal platforms were linked to form a decentralised data space, creating a federated mobility data ecosystem. Building on this, contributions were made in complex real-time use cases to reducing environmental pollution, traffic liquefaction and multimodal commuter notification.

Materna was involved at the request of the Federal Highway Research Institute, as Materna operates the MDM. Materna has expertise in MobilityDataSpace (architecture and use cases).

The project was completed in May 2022.

• Application of the "International Data Spaces" reference architecture model to mobility data
• Development of domain-specific ontologies and an extended IDS information model
• Research and development of distributed organisational and business models
• Roadmap for the MDS-compliant further development of the MDM

More about the research project

Conception and testing of a data platform

HGVs parked directly on motorways and trunk roads are a growing problem. The constantly growing volume of heavy goods vehicles, already identified as a potential safety factor in traffic, was once to be addressed by more strictly regulated driving times - for greater safety on German roads. However, the regulations also led to a concentration of HGVs at petrol stations, service areas and car parks, where many vehicles are now parked illegally and dangerously due to a lack of space.

The "Intelligent Truck Parking" (ITP) research project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, is tackling this congestion problem. Materna is part of the project consortium.

The primary goal of the research project is to realise a data platform that enables drivers and companies to efficiently manage routes and rest breaks. The (actually) available parking space capacities act as a data basis for navigation and logistics systems, which can obtain the information either directly or indirectly from distribution platforms such as the MDM (Mobility Data Marketplace). The information on the occupancy status of car parks enables predictive planning for break times and helps to counteract the increasing concentration of heavy goods vehicles. ITP pursues the following goals: Forecasting the availability of truck parking spaces on motorways, using existing data sources, developing data mining and machine learning algorithms and developing exemplary business models and cooperation scenarios.

Materna is assuming the role of system integrator and technical project manager in this project. Materna is also developing the majority of the software components. The project was completed in summer 2021.

More about the Intelligent Truck Parking research project

To the Fraunhofer IML press release on the completion of ITP

Heart research in the Medolution project

In cases of cardiac insufficiency, doctors are increasingly implanting so-called left ventricular assist devices, also known colloquially as artificial hearts, into their patients. In many cases, the artificial heart even becomes a permanent solution because there are not enough real donor hearts available. These patients then require medical monitoring for the rest of their lives.

However, telemonitoring, which can be used for monitoring purposes, is still in its infancy. The three-year, publicly funded Medolution research project aims to remedy this situation and make everyday life easier for patients who have to live with such an artificial heart. In addition to various industry partners, the Schüchtermann Schiller'sche Kliniken from Bad Rothenfelde and the Hannover Medical School are important project partners.

The Materna experts are supporting the research project, which was launched in autumn 2015, with their expertise in the areas of cloud-based processing of big (medical sensor) data and the automated networking and control of medical devices.

The project is scheduled for completion in May 2019.

More about the Medolution research project

Information concept for crisis and disaster situations

Providing coordinated assistance in crisis situations is a very demanding task for everyone involved. Authorities and organisations with security tasks must make their decisions dynamically on the basis of a large amount of information.

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, a suitable information and communication concept is being developed as part of the K3 project.

As a basis, the information that accumulates in real time must be suitably analysed, evaluated and prioritised. In crisis situations, social media become increasingly important and must be sensibly integrated into a modern communication concept.

To ensure this, Materna is developing a web portal with other project partners. It will contain special portlets that extract information from social networks and prepare it visually and interactively in the shortest possible time so that it can be analysed quickly and easily. Users of the portal will thus be provided with individually configurable user interfaces in web browsers.

Access authorisations are controlled by "Role Based Access Control" and enable dynamic role allocation for each application. Materna uses Liferay as the portal software and Vaadin to implement the user interface.

The research project ran until the beginning of 2018.

More about the BMBF's K3 research project

Intelligent building infrastructures in the Building as a Service project

Modern buildings are equipped with various sensors and actuators as part of building automation and building management systems (BMS systems), for example for air conditioning, lighting, ventilation, heating and security. Until now, there have been numerous individual solutions for the various BMS areas of application, which are operated in parallel. The standards in communication technology are also still too different, meaning that sensors cannot communicate with each other or exchange data.

In future, this should be possible using standardised standards and sensors. In the international research project Building as a Service (BaaS), Materna is working with project partners to develop a prototype of a software platform that can be used to comprehensively control building management systems for ventilation, heating, temperature and lighting in office complexes, for example. Materna is utilising its expertise in the areas of IT service management and sensor integration and communication.

In March 2015, the BaaS project received the "Exhibition Award" at the ARTEMIS-ITEA Co-Summit in Berlin for a miniaturised model house, which can be used to illustrate the solutions developed in the project in a striking way.

The research project ran until the end of 2016.

More about the Building as a Service research project

Networking clouds in the EASI-CLOUDS project

Cloud computing has become an integral part of IT. Nevertheless, there are still technical challenges, such as the lack of standardised service quality across all software layers of cloud structures. Service offerings from the three layers of infrastructure, middleware and software are generally not harmonised with each other, as the solutions used often come from different manufacturers. This prevents clouds from being networked with each other and is one reason why cloud computing is still not sufficiently accepted by end users and companies.

The European research project EASI-CLOUDS (Extendable Architecture and Service Infrastructure for Cloud-Aware Software) was located in this environment. Together with Charité Berlin, the project partners researched neuroradiological diagnostics in order to be able to calculate and evaluate computationally intensive MRI scans for brain diseases more quickly with the help of networked clouds. The underlying cloud architecture was realised with OpenStack. The aim of the research project was to develop an open cloud infrastructure that guarantees and supports interoperability at all layers of cloud computing.

As part of the project, Materna developed a prototype for the cross-layer monitoring of cloud services and was thus able to build up comprehensive knowledge of OpenStack technology. The EASI-CLOUDS project, which has now been completed, received the "Excellence Award for Business Impact" at the ARTEMIS-ITEA Co-Summit in Berlin in March 2015 - an award for particularly market-oriented research and development activities. The research project ran from December 2011 to August 2014.

More about EASI-CLOUDS

Development of SOA-capable components in the OSAmI project

The aim of the OSAmI project (Open Source Ambient Intelligence) was to develop and test an SOA-capable component platform that also supports very small devices and is to be made available as open source software.

The German sub-project focussed on the healthcare application area. The aim was to support interoperability, maintainability and reliability as well as the automated configuration and management of medical devices and service systems. The development of a demonstrator to support the outpatient cardiological rehabilitation of heart patients showed the applicability of the results. The telemedical project enabled cardiac patients to carry out cardiologically monitored endurance training at home, which was monitored virtually by a doctor. Vital data such as ECG, pulse, blood pressure and oxygen saturation were monitored by the system and transmitted to the doctor in the clinic. The TU Dortmund University, Materna and the Schüchtermann clinics in Bad Rothenfelde were involved in this sub-project.

The technical basis was formed by the platform specified by the OSGi Alliance, on which applications and services can be executed in the sense of an SOA. It is combined with web services, in particular DPWS / WS4D, to enable distributed, dynamically configurable, manufacturer-neutral and device-independent solutions.

The project ran from 2008 to 2011.

Development of a service-based infrastructure in the Sirena project

Sirena (Service Infrastructure for Real Time Embedded Networked Applications) was a European research project with the aim of developing a service-based infrastructure for real-time capable embedded networked applications. The web service-based technology developed in the Sirena project is of interest for a wide range of applications, including building and industrial automation, automotive electronics and medical technology.

Materna contributed its experience as a system integrator and ensured from the outset that both manageability and interoperability were taken into account when defining the framework. Infrastructure services were designed and specified to provide the basic management services and mechanisms as well as administration functions to customise and manage the applications.

The project ran from 2003 to 2005 and was honoured with the "ITEA Achievement Award" in 2006.

More about the Sirena project