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How healthy is the environment of our cities? Plants reflect urban climate and soil conditions with remarkable precision. Using more than 80 million observations from plant identification apps, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry have produced a detailed picture of fine-scale climate and soil conditions for 326 European cities.

Energy-efficient and data-saving: research team develops audio system for fault detection in industry How can bio-inspired microsensor technology be used to reliably and resource-efficiently detect acoustic anomalies in industrial environments? An interdisciplinary research team from the Ilmenau School of Electronics (ISGE) at TU Ilmenau is looking into this question.

The Go gRIEn project team at the Ilmenau School of Green Electronics (ISGE) is researching sustainability in microchip production. In future, fewer environmentally harmful chemicals are to be used in the microstructuring of glass. Whether electric cars, smartphones or smart homes - the demand for semiconductors is constantly growing and with it the ecological footprint of the electronics industry.

Contactless diagnosis: research team develops innovative measurement technology to determine vital signs A research team from TU Ilmenau and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) has jointly developed an optical measurement system that can be used to monitor the health status of chronically ill or highly contagious people using vital parameters such as body temperature, respiratory rate or oxygen saturation without contact.

Prof. Patrique Fiedler and his team at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics (BMTI) at TU Ilmenau are working on an EEG system suitable for use in space. It is intended to accompany astronauts on long-term missions in order to recognize and counteract limitations in their performance in good time.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and the TU Ilmenau have shown that plant observations collected using plant identification apps such as Flora Incognita can provide information about the developmental stages of plants - both on a small scale and across Europe. "The snowdrops have never bloomed as early as this year, have they?" Many people who walk through nature with their eyes open are sure to have asked themselves these or similar questions.

Vehicles are approved for road use after they have undergone extensive road safety tests. However, suitable test and approval procedures still need to be developed for automated driving cars. In the German-Japanese research project VIVID, a research team from TU Ilmenau, together with a large project consortium, tested various scenarios in road traffic in a virtual environment and tested radar sensors to detect the surroundings.

Research carried out by the Technische Universität Ilmenau has shown that rainwater on the scalp can reduce the damage caused by direct lightning strikes to the head. In comparison to dry scalps, wet scalps are less severely struck and the wetness also reduces the electrical current to which the brain is exposed.

Safer and more energy-efficient vehicle systems: Research cooperation paves the way for future developments in AI-supported system design Scientists from Technischen Universität Ilmenau and Robert Bosch GmbH have been honored at the renowned IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI) for their pioneering contribution to AI-supported system design.

Technologies that pave the way for our well-being - in numerous interdisciplinary research projects, scientists at TU Ilmenau are developing innovative technological solutions that improve our quality of life. At the kick-off of the new Scientific Year Environment and Health, researchers spoke about their pioneering work.

Simple plastics made from polyolefins such as films or carrier bags have become an integral part of our everyday lives, but are rarely recycled. Junior Professor Robert Geitner wants to give these food packaging materials a new lease of life. At his Physical Chemistry/Catalysis Group, he is researching new potential applications for the materials.

To ensure safe and efficient traffic, the various objects in road and air traffic must be able to quickly detect their spatial environment using radar and communicate with each other via radio networks. In order to investigate the radar reflection of a so-called VTOL drone (short for "Vertical Take-Off and Landing"), which can take off and land vertically without a runway, the Electronic Measurements and Signal Processing (EMS) Group at TU Ilmenau has set up a test facility at the BiRa test facility has just completed an extensive measurement campaign at the BiRa test facility.

In a large-scale research project, the Technische Universität Ilmenau is developing a method for robotic surgery that will enable much more effective treatment of malignant cancerous tumors. With a combination of highly sensitive sensor technology, modern imaging and artificial intelligence, the surgeon can perform the operation more precisely and with less tissue damage than ever before - significantly improving the patient's chances of recovery.

In a large-scale international collaborative research project, the Technische Universität Ilmenau has developed a system for automated monitoring and quality assurance of drinking water during ongoing supply operations. The digital online monitoring system detects impurities in the water in the pipes and initiates their cleaning in an emergency.

The Technische Universität Ilmenau, together with research partners, has developed a microphone inspired by biology that picks up sound similar to the human ear. The microphone could help improve speech recognition for controlling a variety of digital applications. In the future, the new process could even make overall acoustic systems consisting of a microphone and speech recognition more efficient, so that they consume less energy.

"Flora Incognita," Germany's most popular plant identification app, has received new artificial intelligence - as a result, the number of plant species that can be determined has tripled: Around 16,000 species can now be identified worldwide. In addition, the app, which is now available in 20 languages, now also works in offline mode, and its digital educational offering includes a wealth of new information, such as improved distribution maps of many species.

Water is one of the essential resources of all life. Ensuring that all people have access to clean drinking water and safeguarding its quality is not just a task for politicians. Scientists like Prof. Pu Li, head of the Process Optimization Group at the TU Ilmenau, also make an important contribution to our water supply with their research.

Scientists at TU Ilmenau have succeeded in realizing and understanding in detail a molecular magnifying glass for the lattice vibrations of a two-dimensional material. The results of the work, which are the result of many years of intensive joint research with theoretical physicist Mads Brandbyge from TU Denmark, have just been published in Physical Review Letters , the most important journal for physics research.

Scientists at TU Ilmenau have succeeded in improving the accuracy of data evaluations for forecasting weather events, among other things, by up to 80 percent. In the scientific publication ,,Flipped Classroom - Effective Teaching for Time Series Forecasting", which was published in October, Prof. Patrick Mäder, head of the department Data-intensive Systems and Visualization, and Philipp Teutsch, research associate at the same department, present their research results on the training of recurrent neural networks.

In the spirit of the energy transition, TU Ilmenau is developing a resource-efficient power distribution grid for Germany. Such a power grid, based on direct current technology, will be specifically tailored to the increasing use of renewable energy generated in a large number of decentralized plants and will offer significantly higher operational reliability than the current grid.