What We Do

As a pioneer for safe, intelligent cognitive systems for production automation, Fraunhofer IKS focuses on the following topics:

• Automation systems
• Industrial sensors

Fraunhofer IKS facilitates prediction & decision support by developing trustworthy AI models using clinical data. 

Will the cars of the future drive autonomously? This vision of the future will only become reality if autonomous driving is safe. Fraunhofer IKS is therefore working on adaptive software architectures for vehicles.

Quantum computers could enable new applications. Fraunhofer IKS is researching safe software applications for quantum computing so that calculations can be relied upon.

In the field of defense, Fraunhofer IKS is researching how to better protect people through the use of trustworthy and transparent intelligent systems.

With the Fraunhofer IKS Playground, the institute offers access to experimental prototypes and innovative concepts from cutting-edge research.

We reduce technological risks and increase trust in your innovation—ensuring reliable systems and a standards-compliant market launch without delays.

Fraunhofer IKS regularly offers exciting and varied workshops on topics in our key areas Automation, Health, Mobility and Quantum Computing.

The goal of Fraunhofer IKS is to take advantage of machine learning technologies in order to design a future that is safe. AI technologies must be 100 percent dependable, especially when it comes to safety-critical applications.

Software systems are becoming increasingly complex. Safety engineering plays an important role in meeting high safety requirements. Fraunhofer IKS is conducting research into the requirements AI must meet in order to be sufficiently safe. We are also working on safety cases to verify the safety of the overall system.

Cognitive systems have the ability to adapt to their environment and as a result, solve complex tasks on their own. Fraunhofer IKS conducts research into safe and dependable cognitive systems.

Under the term resilience, Fraunhofer IKS optimizes the benefits of a system while maintaining safety in uncertain, unknown, and changing contexts. This means that resilient software systems must be manageable and adaptable.

By using a digital twin, production processes can be optimized and problems such as autonomous driving detected and solved using existing data before they arise in physical reality at all.

In DevOps, a variety of tools are used and a specific cultural philosophy is applied with the goal of automating and integrating the processes between the software development teams, also known as developers, and the IT teams.

Fraunhofer IKS helps you systematically identify and quantify uncertainty in AI-based systems and integrate it into your safety and risk management (uncertainty estimation). Through workshops, customer-specific analyses, and co-engineering, we work together to develop uncertainty models, monitoring solutions, and evidence strategies. 

Adaptive Software must also be able to adapt at runtime when critical components fail in order to guarantee safe and dependable behavior in each situation. This is what Fraunhofer IKS is working on.

Digitalbonus.Bayern is a funding program for the digitization of small enterprises. Fraunhofer IKS supports you in the areas of AI, robotics, and digital twins. Learn more about the funding opportunities: