‘Innovative Platforms for Electronic Systems’: Second Josef Ressel Center opened at the UAS Technikum Wien

The second Josef Ressel Center at the UAS Technikum Wien was officially opened on March 7th, 2019. The center is dedicated to a five-year research program into ‘Innovative Platforms for Electronic Systems’ that is going to be undertaken in cooperation with companies operating in the sector. The Josef Ressel Center is being funded by the Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung und Wirtschaftsstandort (BMDW – Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Affairs) in conjunction with the participating companies.

“Innovative hardware is one of the prerequisites for digitalization,” Margarete Schramböck, Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs, said. “Flexible, reprogrammable hardware will be driving many areas forward, including electronic tolling systems, autonomous vehicles and Industry 4.0. This JR Center will be making a valuable contribution to this progress while, at the same time, strengthening important Austrian companies and the Austrian research landscape.”
“We’re delighted to have a second Josef Ressel Center at the FHTW,” Rector Fritz Schmöllebeck said at the opening ceremony. “It underlines both the quality of our research in the fields of embedded systems and cyber-physical systems as well as the confidence that sponsors and industry have in our skill sets.”

Location factor: complex microelectronics at lower costs

The new Josef Ressel Center will be working in the area of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These are microelectronic components that enable the realization of entire multiprocessor systems on single chips. This makes FPGAs highly innovative platforms for electronic systems. They are used as components in telecommunications, for example, but also in such other fields as automotive and consumer electronics. Market studies forecast further growth in the demand for these highly developed components over the coming years. FPGA technology is opening up the potential especially for countries such as Austria – where the economies depend largely on SMEs – to realize complex electronics while avoiding the now exorbitant one-off costs that are associated with the production of application-specific circuits (ASICs). The Josef Ressel Center will also be able to tie in with current Austrian initiatives, such as ‘Silicon Austria Labs’ or ‘Silicon Alps’ in the electronic based systems sector.

Ministry of Economic Affairs supports applications in telecommunications, Industry 4.0 and AI

New design methods, ways of minimizing power consumption and aspects in the realization of safety-critical systems using FPGAs are, for example, being investigated at the research center – always practice-oriented and based on the concrete applications needed by the
business partners, i.e. Elektrobit Austria GmbH, Kapsch TrafficCom AG and Oregano Systems Design & Consulting GmbH. The application areas include automotive electronics and diagnostics, automation technology, electronic tolling systems and high-precision clock synchronization.

“Modern electronic systems are also essential basic platforms for many applications in the fields of artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things,” Dr Peter Rössler, Head of the Josef Ressel Center, said. “Rapid technological progress in microelectronics makes it necessary to continuously keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. Such funded projects as the Josef Ressel Centers create very good opportunities for the UAS Technikum Wien to embrace these developments and to work with industrial partners while helping to shape them to a certain extent through application-oriented research.”

Josef Ressel Centers: international best practice, open to other businesses

Top-level application-oriented research is carried out at the Josef Ressel Centers where outstanding researchers join forces with innovative companies. The Christian Doppler Research Association is internationally regarded as an example of best practice in the promotion of such joint activities. Josef Ressel Centers are jointly funded by the Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung und Wirtschaftsstandort (BMDW – Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Affairs) and the participating companies. The flexible funding model means that other interested companies are also able to join the cooperation during the center’s five-year term. The new Josef Ressel Center is the second project of this kind in Vienna and at the same time the second Josef Ressel Center at the UAS Technikum Wien: research into the verification of embedded computer systems was already carried out in a closely associated field there from 2013 to 2018.
More information is available here.