The future is concealed in the unspectacular. Very little in this coolly lit, grey room in the basement of Building 445 provides any inkling of the trailblazing technology that people are working on here: a minute apparatus implanted in the human eye is to replace weak lenses and the muscles that enable sharp eyesight. It would make reading glasses superfluous. “We plan to have a prototype ready by 2014,” says Helmut Guth. The physicist belongs to the interdisciplinary research team that has been developing this artificial accommodation system since 2004. Guth works at the Institute for Applied Computer Science (IAI) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He demonstrates the technology in the lab, where two large artificial eyes have to focus on a picture from different distances. It works surprisingly well. As soon as the picture card is moved, the lenses adjust and a few seconds later the recorded image of a rabbit is once again sharp and in focus on the computer screen. Using the angular position of the artificial eyes, the system identifies where to look and how near or far the object is, explains Guth. In the process the technology uses the Earth’s magnetic field to orient itself.
The development work requires truly remarkable feats of microtechnology. Guth explains that the artificial lens, mechanical components, electronics, sensors and naturally an energy supply too all have to fit together in a disc one centimetre in diameter and four millimetres thick. Programming the requisite software was also particularly challenging. “Things get complex when lots of different subsystems have to work together reliably.” A microcomputer calculates the necessary lens adjustments on the basis of a constant supply of sensor data.
The KIT and this artificial accommodation system are just two examples of the activities of the booming information technology industry in southwest Germany. The region has developed into a top-rank IT location and is often described as Europe’s Silicon Valley. In addition to 17 scientific institutions, the region is also home to major firms such as Europe’s largest software producer SAP, Software AG, which is also a world-leading company for software solutions, as well as numerous smaller businesses in the IT sector. In January 2010 they all joined together in the Software Cluster Rhine Main Neckar designated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). A total of 350 partners are pursuing the goal of strengthening the development of software innovation for “the digital company”. The BMBF will be supporting projects of this kind with up to 40 million euros a year until 2015. When it comes to business software, firms from southwest Germany already have a 36% world market share. Joint research projects and cooperation within clusters are crucial for the future success of the region’s software industry, emphasizes Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG in Darmstadt. “Growing international recognition of the region helps us to move our projects forward.”
Streibich’s company has primarily specialized on developing software that facilitates the digital management of business processes. Harald Schöning explains that the latter should be better connected with concrete reality. “You need to know how things happening in the world affect your business,” he says. Logistics processes are a good example here. Imagine a truck full of frozen food, says software expert Walter Waterfeld. It’s the middle of summer and the truck is stuck in a traffic jam. Sensors in the storage area report rising temperatures to company headquarters. What can be done? Can the shipment still reach its destination on time? Is there a warehouse nearby? Or should the driver turn around and take the goods back? Intelligent software supports decision-making chains like these.
“Our vision of the future is that every product knows its life history,” says Harald Schöning. The idea is that all relevant details are stored on special chips on the packaging, therefore enabling the product to communicate with the world outside. Are supermarket shelves emptying faster that expected? No problem. The warehouse manager has already been notified and is organizing fresh supplies. Software AG is jointly developing innovations like these with other partners within the framework of an initiative called the Digital Product Flow Alliance.
A very different IT approach is being pursued by Mario Albrecht’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken. The researchers are working on representing molecular networks in medical bioinformatics. This will make it possible, for example, to display highly complex biochemical processes in human cells in an easily understandable way. The roughly 20,000 human genes control the production of an even greater number of different protein molecules, which means it is easy to lose track if you only have lists or tables available. Handling these enormous amounts of data and recognizing relationships is much easier when it is presented in visual form. That is precisely what Albrecht and his colleagues are making possible. The experts are also allowing researchers all over the world to download the programmes they develop by making them available on the Internet free of charge. “Using our network models allows you to see which molecules interact and which proteins might function incorrectly,” explains Mario Albrecht. “Analyses of this kind can then provide valuable indicators about a disease’s cause.”////
