Trustworthy AI

Press Release

Fraunhofer at the Hannover Messe 2022

Artificial intelligence – but please be trustworthy!

Research News / May 02, 2022

To date, entrepreneurs have not put a lot of trust in artificial intelligence – many processes are still performed manually. An example of how artificial intelligence and control technology can be combined to create a completely trustworthy system is RoboGrinder: A grinding machine developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design IEM, which eliminates up to 40 percent of grinding processes. It can be seen at the joint Fraunhofer booth at the Hannover Messe 2022 from May 30 to June 2 (Hall 5, Booth A06).

Companies often have a hard time with artificial intelligence: They are concerned that they will end up with a solution which is not always reliable – and therefore often continue to perform tasks, especially those of a complex nature, manually. Fraunhofer IEM researchers have set themselves the goal of countering this skepticism and boosting confidence in artificial intelligence. “We combine the tried and true – control technology – with the new – artificial intelligence,” explains Steven Koppert, Group Manager of Trusted Machine Intelligence at Fraunhofer IEM. “While much of control technology is based on physical and mathematical models that can be analyzed and trusted, artificial intelligence – which in itself is not particularly trustworthy at first – usually relies exclusively on data and also solves creative tasks. Combine these two approaches and you get a flexible, trustworthy system – also known as trusted machine intelligence.”

RoboGrinder: An intelligent grinding machine

What that means exactly can be best explained by an example: The RoboGrinder. At Düspohl, a mechanical engineering company, the grinding process for the rubber-like rollers that press films against the component when applying them to window frames or baseboards is being automated for the first time. Until now, these rollers, which are known as profile wrapping rollers and tend to have a complex shape, have been ground by hand. This is because automation using control technology alone is not readily feasible for the rubber-like material.  .... '