KU Leuven visits Hannover Messe

Hannover Messe is known to be the world’s leading industrial technology show. More than 200,00 trade visitors inform themselves every year about what the 6,500 exhibitors have to offer. This year the project partner KU Leuven and the associated partner Ynréa-ISEN participated too.

The concept of the Internet of Things is around quite some time. The Hannover Messe 2018 showed how far this concept has come already. To further expand their knowledge of the current status of implementation and acceptance on the part of international companies a delegation from the project partner KU Leuven and the associated partner Yncréa-ISEN visited the event on behalf of the INCASE project.

Various aspects were especially interesting for the delegation. IBM, for example, showed a number of IT technologies merging OT and IT (Operational Technology and Information Technology) into I4.0 applications. Belgians early Mindsphere adopter Vyncke presented their roadmap to integrate and optimise plant efficiency by using big data techniques. This data is gathered from installations worldwide.

Also impressive: Semantics, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques were shown on a small yet remarkable demo (see image): two robots teaching themselves how to assemble components …

As the experts stressed out, the examples shown at the trade fair can be an excellent inspiration for technologies that SMEs can apply in their roadmap towards smart factories!