Research and Development

Driving greater digitalisation in the port industry

More and more industries are turning to digital technologies to make existing processes more efficient or to develop new business models. Innovative technologies are also opening up new opportunities for optimisation at seaports and inland ports. However, digitalisation in ports is still in its infancy: although a great deal of data is already being collected from operational processes, there is still significant potential to utilise this data to achieve efficiency gains. Managers are faced with the challenge of identifying the most suitable solutions from the wide range of options already available. The international research project I2PANEMA has created reference architectures for this purpose and demonstrated how, for example, data analysis – particularly in conjunction with the Internet of Things – can be used to improve existing processes. A reference architecture has been developed for the roll-out of industrial IoT applications in ports. I2PANEMA stands for Intelligent, IoT-based Port Artefacts Communication, Administration and Maintenance.

Data provides insights

Technologies such as the Internet of Things generate large volumes of data that can be used, for example, to control systems or optimise processes. Complementary data analysis lays the foundations for implementing new data-driven services and assistance functions in the port environment. The project has demonstrated how companies can use this data to implement innovative traffic management measures, reduce emissions or optimise energy efficiency. Furthermore, I2PANEMA aimed to help integrate existing and often heterogeneous IT systems. After all, it is only through optimised data exchange that digitalisation in the port environment can be driven forward efficiently.

European project

Furthermore, as part of I2PANEMA, specific scenarios were devised that clearly illustrate the benefits to be gained from digitalisation. The projects included, for example, applications in the areas of noise reduction, traffic management, energy consumption, emissions monitoring and positioning, such as:

• Integration of the ‘digital logbook’ at the port authority 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
• Optimisation of passenger car loading at the port
• Support for the inspection of ships using underwater drones in the port
• Reduction of particulate matter pollution in the port

A number of ports, IT and logistics companies, and research institutions from several European countries participated in I2PANEMA as part of the EUREKA ITEA cluster programme. The consortium was led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics and Materna, both based in Dortmund. The experts at Materna contributed tried-and-tested specialist knowledge in the field of digitalisation and experience with the Internet of Things to the project. The project was completed at the end of 2022. Funding of around 5 million euros for the German sub-project was covered by the participating companies’ own resources and by grants from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The cross-border collaboration was also intended to help turn the participating German seaports and inland ports into 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, at the same time, reduce emissions from freight transport.

Innovative applications for augmented reality in inland and seaports

The digitalisation of the workplace has not bypassed inland 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 examined in various test environments. Augmented reality involves enriching reality with computer-generated information. Materna contributed its expertise in the field of augmented reality to the project. InnoPortAR stands for ‘Innovative Applications for Augmented Reality in Inland and Seaports’.

The research partners investigated both conceptual and technical issues relating to the practical use of AR in port environments. These included conceptual aspects, such as the limitations on the content displayed due to the available field of view, and how much information can be usefully displayed without overwhelming staff. Neural networks were used to recognise objects within the viewer’s field of view. However, the research also focused on technical issues relating to the requirements in the port environment and the performance of the smart glasses in various lighting and weather conditions.

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

The use of AR can help to optimise transhipment and stuffing processes in the port environment and reduce the workload on staff through coordinated human-technology interaction. Overall, the project supported the introduction of innovative technologies into the port environment and led to greater use of IT within logistics chains. The use of AR not only makes workplaces 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. Use cases included, for example, the maintenance and repair of cargo-handling equipment and port infrastructure, the identification of load units during cargo handling, the securing of cargo when loading into containers, and support for interface control in the trimodal terminal.

The consortium for the research project comprised the following partners: the Port of Duisburg (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. InnoPortAR was funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.

The project was completed in autumn 2021.

More about the InnoPortAR research project

Linking local, 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 both private and public transport. These new services are underpinned by real-time data on traffic, travellers’ needs and the availability of transport options. The secure and sovereign provision of this data, as well as its protected utilisation within distributed systems, will be crucial factors for the success of tomorrow’s mobility.

MobiDS initiated the development of the Mobility Data Space, which was intended to be established as a mobility data ecosystem, incorporating the Mobility Data Marketplace (MDM) of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) and other local authority transport data platforms. New local transport data and nationwide mobility data were to be made accessible and made available for secure and sovereign processing on the platforms, which had been expanded to include Data Space concepts for this purpose. The local platforms were to be linked to the MDM so that regional data could also be made available and utilised at national level.

As part of the project, the MDM and other municipal platforms were further developed to support data-driven services. To this end, they were expanded to include a secure and protected execution environment for services and data apps, within which mobility data can be made available and refined whilst guaranteeing data sovereignty. In this way, even more sensitive mobility data, such as Floating Car Data (FCD), became usable for the first time. The MDM and the municipal platforms were linked to form a decentralised data space, thereby creating a federal mobility data ecosystem. Building on this, contributions were made in complex real-time use cases towards reducing environmental impact, improving traffic flow and providing multimodal commuter notifications.

Materna was involved at the request of the Federal Highway Research Institute, as Materna operates the MDM. Materna possesses 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

Design and testing of a data platform

Lorries parked directly alongside motorways and main roads are posing an ever-increasing problem. The steady rise in heavy goods traffic – already identified as a potential safety hazard – was once intended to be addressed through stricter regulations on driving hours, with the aim of improving safety on German roads. However, these regulations have also led to a concentration of lorries at petrol stations, service areas and car parks, where many vehicles are now being parked illegally and dangerously due to a lack of space.

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

The primary aim of the research project is to develop a data platform that enables drivers and companies to manage their routes and rest breaks efficiently. The (actual) available parking space capacities serve as the 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). Information on the occupancy status of parking spaces enables forward-planning for rest periods and helps to counteract the increasing concentration of heavy goods vehicles. ITP pursues the following objectives: forecasting the availability of lorry parking spaces on motorways, utilising existing data sources, developing data mining and machine learning algorithms, and developing exemplary business models and collaboration scenarios.

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

More on the Intelligent Truck Parking research project

Read the Fraunhofer IML press release on the completion of ITP

Heart research in the Medolution project

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

However, telemonitoring – which could be usefully applied for this purpose – 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. Alongside various industry partners, the Schüchtermann Schiller Clinics in Bad Rothenfelde and Hannover Medical School are key project partners.

The experts at Materna are supporting the research project, which was launched in autumn 2015, with their specialist knowledge 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 to be completed in May 2019.

More about the Medolution research project

Information Strategy for Crisis and Disaster Situations

Providing coordinated assistance in crisis situations is a highly demanding task for all those involved. Authorities and organisations responsible for security matters must make decisions dynamically on the basis of a wide range of information.

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the K3 project is developing a suitable information and communication strategy.

As a basis for this, the information accumulating in real time must be suitably analysed, assessed and prioritised. In crisis situations, social media are becoming increasingly important and must be meaningfully integrated into a modern communication framework.

To ensure this, Materna is developing a web portal in collaboration with other project partners. It will contain specialised portlets that extract information from social networks and present it visually and interactively in the shortest possible time, enabling simple and rapid analysis. Users of the portal will thus be provided with individually configurable user interfaces in web browsers.

Access permissions are controlled by ‘Role-Based Access Control’ and allow for dynamic role allocation on a per-operation basis. Materna uses Liferay as the portal software, whilst Vaadin is used to implement the user interface.

The research project ran until early 2018.

More about the BMBF’s K3 research project

Smart 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), for example for air conditioning, lighting, ventilation, heating and security. To date, there have been numerous individual solutions for the various BMS application areas, all of which operate in parallel. Furthermore, the standards in communication technology are still too diverse, meaning that sensors cannot communicate with one another or exchange data.

In future, this should be possible through the use of uniform standards and sensors. As part of the international research project ‘Building as a Service’ (BaaS), Materna is working with project partners to develop a prototype software platform that can be used to control building management systems – such as those for ventilation, heating, temperature and lighting – across entire office complexes. Here, Materna is drawing on its expertise in the fields of IT service management, sensor integration and sensor 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 vividly illustrate the solutions developed within the project.

The research project ran until the end of 2016.

More about the ‘Building as a Service’ research project

Interconnecting Clouds in the EASI-CLOUDS Project

Cloud computing has become an integral part of IT. Nevertheless, technical challenges remain, such as the lack of consistent service quality across all software layers of cloud infrastructures. The services offered by the three layers – infrastructure, middleware and software – are generally not coordinated, as the solutions used often come from different manufacturers. This prevents clouds from being interconnected and is one reason why cloud computing is still not sufficiently accepted by end-users and businesses.

It was within this context that the European research project EASI-CLOUDS (Extendable Architecture and Service Infrastructure for Cloud-Aware Software) was carried out. Together with Charité Berlin, the project partners conducted research into neuroradiological diagnostics with the aim of using interconnected clouds to process and analyse computationally intensive MRI scans for brain disorders more quickly. The underlying cloud architecture was implemented using OpenStack. The aim of the research project was to develop an open cloud infrastructure that ensures and supports interoperability across all layers of cloud computing.

As part of the project, Materna developed a prototype for cross-layer monitoring of cloud services, thereby building up extensive expertise in 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 recognising research and development activities that are particularly market-oriented. The research project ran from December 2011 to August 2014.

More about EASI-CLOUDS

Development of SOA-enabled components in the OSAmI project

The aim of the OSAmI (Open Source Ambient Intelligence) project was to develop and test an SOA-enabled component platform that would also support micro-devices and be made available as open-source software.

The German sub-project focused on the healthcare sector. 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 demonstrated the practical applicability of the results. The telemedicine project enabled heart patients to undertake cardiologically monitored endurance training at home, which was virtually supervised by medical staff. Vital signs such as ECG, pulse, blood pressure and oxygen saturation were monitored by the system and transmitted to the doctor at the clinic. The Technical University of Dortmund, Materna and the Schüchtermann Clinics in Bad Rothenfelde were involved in this sub-project.

The technical foundation was provided by the platform specified by the OSGi Alliance, on which applications and services can be executed in accordance with a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It is combined with web services, in particular DPWS / WS4D, to enable distributed, dynamically configurable, vendor-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 aimed at developing a service-based infrastructure for real-time 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 expertise as a systems integrator, ensuring from the outset that both manageability and interoperability were taken into account when defining the framework. Infrastructure services were designed and specified to provide fundamental management services and mechanisms, as well as administrative functions for customising and managing the applications.

The project ran from 2003 to 2005 and was awarded the ‘ITEA Achievement Award’ in 2006.

More about the Sirena project