Paths to the future
Projects for
a better
world
The future doesn’t just happen. To a great extent, it will unfold in the way that human beings have conceived, planned and designed it. This is especially true for the future of fundamental areas like mobility, food and energy supply.
The first steps into a better world with a high quality of life lead us through test environments, technology centres, simulators and training locations. These enable research and the courage to try new things and learn lessons. They are the contexts for exploring things that will move people in the future, halt climate change, feed us, and supply us all with green energy. Join us as we head to four such places to discover their pioneering projects.
From zero to 900.
And from 24 to 1,000.
An almost airless tube in whose vacuum capsules move at tremendous speeds: In a hyperloop like this, you could dash and travel between two cities as fast as you could in an aeroplane. All this is not merely fantasy for the engineers at the Technical University of Munich; they want to turn the vision of the hyperloop into reality as a sustainable mobility service. According to the research group’s plans, in the not-too-distant future, transport and passenger capsules are set to speed people and goods to their destinations at 900 kilometres an hour. Journeys in the hyperloop could, for example, replace short-haul flights within Germany. They will operate purely on electricity, so with green electricity they’ll be climate-neutral.
The present version of the hyperloop is 24 metres short. In this testing tube, the team at TU Munich is trying out the drive, the levitation technology and the behaviour of the transport capsule – known as the “pod” – in the vacuum. The first journey in the pod took place on 10 July 2023. And successfully so: The test facility was placed under vacuum conditions, and the passenger capsule, manned by engineers, set off almost weightlessly. Soon, hyperloop rides should last a few seconds longer – in a tube that will then be 1,000 metres long.
The research group is now able to show what future hyperloop systems might look like. The shift from model scale to real dimensions and, in particular, Europe’s first passenger test under vacuum conditions are important milestones for scaling up the technology and realising longer test segments in the near future. The team is not only doing the maths for the drive technology but also calculating the costs for regular operation between two conurbations in Germany, for example. The surprising finding is that construction of the hyperloop would be no more expensive than building a new intercity rail line.
Meals made
of molecules.
Peach and garlic ice cream or vegan vanilla Frappuccino? These exotic delights are not actually what we mean when we talk about “New Food”. Rather, the term denotes entirely innovative foodstuffs, rich in protein and nutritious, so that more people can be fed with fewer resources in future. New Food is based on plants, fungi or algae, or obtained through fermentation. Experiments are also being conducted to create New Food using cell cultures or ingredients from insects.
The concept is being driven forward worldwide by the food industry. So-called cellular agriculture is expected to achieve market volume of more than 500 billion dollars by as early as 2030. Whether an investment in this type of future is worthwhile for individual companies, however, is uncertain. Hence, the GEA Group, one of the leading system and technology suppliers for the food industry, has opened a central hub aimed at minimising investment risk and simultaneously maximising the chances of success for innovative foods. With this “New Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence” (ATC), it hopes to promote New Food innovations.
The facility offers state-of-the-art bioreactors and technologies for precision fermentation on a pilot scale. Customers can use the ATC to further develop their own innovations here and to test production in greater volumes, since it is precisely this upscaling to an industrial scale – from molecule to meal – that is frequently the sticking point in the New Food segment. Often a venture fails to reproduce successful small quantities from the lab in large batches, but the ATC closes the gap between testing landscape and industry without customers having to immediately invest in large-scale plants.
The development teams among food producers can come to the ATC to learn about all the process stages of their New Food cells. The fermenter and bioreactor systems can therefore be set up with almost any cell type. Cell conditions are monitored, reproducibility is evaluated, and efficiency losses or gains can be predicted.
The foods that are developed and tested for the first time in this futuristic “test kitchen” should help to bring an end to factory farming and global hunger – and should ultimately end up on our plates.
Continuous training to
ensure trustworthy AI.
Artificial intelligence systems are a global trend. AI solutions are set to define our future in all areas of life – from smartphones to industry and office applications, through to medical advances. It is therefore all the more important that they meet certain quality standards and work reliably – in other words, that they can be trusted. Ultimately, only the kind of artificial intelligence we can trust will prevail on the market, while the vision of AI taking control over human beings at some point should become a reality nowhere other than in dystopian films.
In order to promote and demonstrate the quality of AI systems, the federal state of Hesse and VDE, the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies, established Germany’s first “AI Quality & Testing Hub” at the end of 2022. Here, companies from the healthcare, financial and mobility sectors in particular are able to verify and improve the quality characteristics of AI systems they have developed themselves. In November 2023 the hub was appointed to a consortium that is developing a voluntary AI quality seal, all part of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport’s “AI Mission”.
The experts at the AI Quality & Testing Hub advise and support companies in application development, testing, data management and quality assurance. A crucial element is ongoing learning and developing the expertise of employees among the client companies. Just as AI gets ever better with repeated training, the AI teams themselves also enjoy continuous education and training programmes. The content includes the basics of AI quality, the technological environments and the current legal framework. The hub can also provide advice on whether companies’ own AI systems and processes meet all the necessary security and compliance standards. Those who consistently follow this path create trust in their own AI developments – and thus get a head start for the future.
Experience hydrogen,
impart knowledge.
The hydrogen core network is coming – an important component on Germany’s path to becoming climate-neutral by 2045. As part of this, hydrogen will be transported through OGE’s pipeline network, so it needs to be prepared optimally for the task. For this, OGE is currently building a training centre that is unique within Europe: its hydrogen test facility at the operating site in Werne. The 1:1 scale model here uses a closed loop process to map technical aspects of safe and efficient long-distance transmission. Here, OGE is building on decades of experience in reliable transmission of natural gas through its own pipeline network, from which many principles and processes can be transferred to the hydrogen core network and applied there.
At the training facility, OGE specialists and trainees learn about the practical handling of hydrogen. Later, specialists from other grid operators will also be trained at the site.
“We are training OGE specialists, and later we’ll include staff from other network operators. This way, they can gain confidence in the practical handling of hydrogen and become future professionals for the operation of our hydrogen pipeline network.”
Various training modules are offered along the closed loop:
- Handling hydrogen
- Maintenance and services
- Measures during operation
- Use of mobile equipment
- Future technologies and processes
These practical training sessions are supplemented by basic courses offered in cooperation with the DVGW and the Gas- und Wärme-Institut Essen e. V. (GWI), a research and service institute for the German gas industry.
“We have asked colleagues from our technology department what they need to know and want to try out in order to be able to operate the hydrogen core network. This was the basis on which we designed the training facility.”
Anyone wanting to pass on valuable know-how to others has to get trained themselves first. In the case of the training facility, this takes place live in situ, so even the planning and construction phases were used to train staff in the design, conceptualisation and implementation of systems and lines for hydrogen. Regulations, standards, applied system components: much of this was new even for the natural gas professionals. The compressors and equipment, for example, had to be H2-compatible. Hydrogen molecules have certain physical properties that mean they behave very differently to methane molecules in some instances (for example with regard to their density, behaviour when depressurised, and their ignitability).
How this works in practice and what technical and operational measures are needed for this was previously evaluated as part of the engineering phase and will be implemented as the plant is put into operation.
This knowledge is then passed on from the opening. At the same time, experience is being gained with the operation of the hydrogen plant, and this then flows into the workshops and training. The result is a “closed loop” in the transfer of hydrogen expertise.
What is happening in the hyperloop, the New Food laboratory, the AI centre and in hydrogen transmission could help shape our lives in future. With the right preparation, thorough testing and comprehensive training, here and elsewhere a future is emerging that we can look to with positivity. watch again