AI – A curse or a blessing for the working world?

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) makes a lot of people nervous. They are afraid that this technology will turn out to be a job killer in the long term. Fraunhofer IML wants to alleviate this fear. Used responsibly, AI can reform the working world to benefit people.

The Dortmund think tank showed what intelligent future technologies for logistics could look like on the occasion of the visit of the federal minister for employment, Hubertus Heil. He has declared the cooperation of humans and AI in the working world to be a top priority. 

Hubertus Heil, the German federal minister for labor and social affairs, went on a summer tour of North RhineWestphalia devoted to topics such as occupational safety, the shortage of skilled workers and the cooperation between humans and AI. As part of this tour, he visited Fraunhofer IML among other places, together with journalists. The visit focused on future technologies that will shape the future working world. It was certainly no coincidence that the minister chose the Dortmund institute as the last stop on his tour, because innovative solutions for the working world in logistics have been researched here for many years. Fraunhofer IML had laid the foundation for researching the technologies of tomorrow several years before. They had announced the “Silicon Economy,” an open-source infrastructure for the platform economy of the future, and the “Social Networked Industry,” in which humans and AI work together as partners in social networks. The federal minister for employment was able to see for himself the great innovative strength of the institute on site.

The increasing complexity and fast pace in logistics pose major challenges to both companies and employees. Huge quantities of data have to be processed, and this data is used as the basis for decisions that are crucial to companies’ competitiveness. On top of this, there is a shortage of skilled workers and demographic change. Staffing levels are becoming lower and lower, and employees are getting older and older. It is more important than ever to make work better for people – more efficient, less strenuous, more sustainable. This is where AI comes into play. In the future, AI will be a decisive factor for competitive advantages, and it will affect the working life of every person. It can help people make the right decisions, organize work more efficiently, and it offers solutions, for example, to counteract the shortage of skilled workers and demographic change. 

Fraunhofer IML regards AI as the decisive future technology of the 21st century. It is helping to create new markets, which are to be discovered. As a key technology, AI offers great opportunities for prosperity and a modern working world. However, companies and employees need security and trust to use AI applications in everyday operations. For this reason, the vision of a “Social Networked Industry,” in which humans are at the center and work with machines as partners, is a task for society as a whole. Fraunhofer IML has widely diversified its research work. This ranges from increasing the efficiency of production processes and resource management, the flexibility of logistics processes and systems, to increasing the transparency of decisions and processes, to adapting the processes in a company to work and life models favored by employees. In the “Social Networked Industry,” solutions are being developed in numerous projects to implement this positive vision of the future while ensuring that Germany as a business/industrial location can keep pace with the rapid development of AI. 

“In the near future, humans and artificial intelligence will work together as partners, and AI will not only provide information but will be actively engaged more and more. The question is according to what principles this will occur. We are heading towards a turning point, the fundamental character of which evokes a “categorical imperative for artificial intelligence” – even if the comparison is still a little misleading. It is our task to ensure a framework for the cooperation of humans and AI according to our standards and rules, as well as to implement it technically. At Fraunhofer, we are working hard on this together with our partners from science and industry,” explained Prof. Michael ten Hompel, executive director of Fraunhofer IML, on the occasion of Federal Minister Hubertus Heil’s visit.

The German federal government has also been pursuing an AI strategy since 2018: Germany is to become the world’s leading location for AI. This is to be achieved by transferring research results to applications comprehensively and quickly as well as by modernizing the administration. The goal is to secure global competitiveness on various levels. This includes recruiting and training AI specialists as well as establishing important, high-performance research structures. The German federal government is committed to advancing a responsible use of AI in the interest of the common good, together with science, business, the state and civil society. The potential of the new technology should be leveraged on the basis of European values, such as the inviolability of human dignity, the respect for privacy and the principle of equality. 

With this great responsibility in mind, the federal minister for employment, Hubertus Heil, is championing the topic of “cooperation between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) in the working world.” This is because AI is not just any innovation to him. Instead, it is a basic innovation that will change and improve our economy and lives as a whole. He believes that one of the tasks of the German Federal Ministry of Labor is to identify international good examples of human-centered applications of artificial intelligence or intelligent tools and systems in the working world. The focus here is on workers as well as on developing their skills and talents, self-determination, safety and health. According to Heil, AI is producing new occupations, and many work processes are being simplified in such a way as to benefit people. 

“Digital technologies, especially AI applications such as ChatGPT, will change the work of many employees. The use of AI in the working world therefore offers many opportunities to simplify work process at companies. In my opinion as the minister for labor, looking for solutions to optimize this further, as yout do here at the Fraunhofer institute, is also an important contribution to counteracting the shortage of skilled workers. I am convinced that this technological development can make working life better. To do this, however, we have to actively shape this technology. Our goal is for AI to serve humans, not vice versa,” said Hubertus Heil, the German federal minister for labor and economic affairs, during his visit in Dortmund.

To underscore the common goal of the German federal government and Fraunhofer IML, the group of visitors around Federal Minister Heil received insights into the pioneering technologies from research and application in the research halls of the institute. The minister also had numerous opportunities to interact with machines himself.

Among other things, Heil was able to control a swarm of bio-intelligent drones. The intelligent drone swarm of Fraunhofer IML and TU Dortmund University imitates the intelligence of a flock of birds and also visualizes virtual behavior as a cyber-physical twin. Testing AI algorithms in a three-dimensional space and a highly dynamic system make it possible to find solutions for complex logistics tasks and transfer them to applications, for example. This research project not only demonstrates the advantages of fast data exchange and ensuring a collision-free path of the drones, it also emphasizes the innovative opportunities that arise when machine learning is integrated in an industrial context.

The minister tested the help of an exoskeleton for various warehouse activities: The (electro-)mechanical support structures worn on the body are intended to reduce the overall physical strain when performing work activities and relieve certain body regions, such as the back. In the long term, this could counteract the high rate of sickness in logistics due to strain on the musculoskeletal system and thus the shortage of skilled workers as well. At the exoskeleton lab at Fraunhofer IML, various passive and active exoskeletons are being tested for their suitability in logistics in an intralogistics obstacle course. The researchers carry out manufacturer-independent tests and training based on typical activities in a logistics environment. The use of AI allows exoskeletons to be automatically utilized in an individual manner, supporting the workers of tomorrow interactively, intuitively and as required. In this context, AI-based approaches to the real-time recording of activities such as body postures and movements as well as conditions such as fatigue help to improve ergonomics.

A further highlight was the “evoBOT” developed at Fraunhofer IML – an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) with two arms that establishes a new generation of transport robots. As a result of its high agility and flexibility, the “evoBOT” is not limited to logistics or industry but can be used in a wide variety of application areas. The dynamically stable system is based on the principle of an inverse pendulum. This allows the autonomous robot to maintain its balance at all times. It can therefore function safely on uneven ground. Unlike conventional robot systems, the “evoBOT” is not limited to pushing and pulling goods. The biologically inspired design also makes it ideal for humantechnology interaction.

Speed robots demonstrate Formula 1 on the hall floor

With the “LoadRunner,” the Fraunhofer IML researchers presented a high-speed robot for sorting and distribution processes. The “LoadRunner” is currently being industrialized together with the KION Group and has already completed several practical tests at the CEP service provider DPD. To develop this technology further and optimize it for industrialization, the “KION Enterprise Lab” was established at Fraunhofer IML. When in use, the “LoadRunner” is especially characterized by its high speed and fast commissioning.

With AI and open source to new possibilities in object recognition

To demonstrate how Fraunhofer IML uses AI and open source to achieve new possibilities in object recognition, the researchers presented a type of COBOT – a 3D sensor demonstrator. This demonstrates a 3D object detection and the gripping of various unsorted items from a container in the area of retail and e-commerce. The use case is based on a typical problem from the area of bin picking (reaching into the box) or belt picking (separating items on a conveyor belt). The randomly arranged objects are detected by a 3D sensor. The sensor data can then be evaluated using AI. For this purpose, AI is used to classify and segment the various objects in the container pixel by pixel.