Today, our everyday life is full of technology. This technology wants to be operated, the human being must somehow interact with the device, the machine or the technical system: This is the field of human-machine interfaces, or HMI for short. With the complexity of the technologies that surround us every day, the need for Human Machine Interfaces that offer the most positive user experience possible is also increasing. Allied Market Research estimates that the global market for human-machine interfaces will grow to US$10.8 billion by 2031 – up from US$4 billion in 2021. As this happens, interaction options are becoming increasingly diverse, with HMI solutions ranging from push buttons and multi-touch screens to voice and gesture control. In this episode we talk to Karl Lehnhoff, Director of the segment Industrial, Scientific & Medical at EBV Elektronik, about trends and technologies in this exciting market.

This podcast interview is part of our magazine issue The Quintessence of Human Machine Interfaces that is available free of charge on you mobile devices. Download our App and enjoy insights into various technology fields.

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One of the greatest challenges in human-machine interfaces is natural interaction. Technology has already made great progress with solutions such as gesture and voice control. Recently, the focus has also turned to controlling machines by thought: brain-machine interfaces measure the brain’s EEG signals and derive control commands for computers, machines or robots from them. One of the pioneers in the use of EEG data for interaction with robotic systems is the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence.

Here, the EXPECT research project is currently underway, whose main goal is to develop an adaptive, self-learning platform for human-robot collaboration. It should not only enable various types of active interaction, but also be able to deduce the human’s intention from gestures, language, eye movements and brain activity – the machine should therefore be able to guess what the human is going to do next.
An exciting project – which is why we are very pleased that we can welcome Prof. Dr. Elsa Kirchner today. She is EXPECT’s project manager for the Robotics Innovation Center research area and will be able to give us interesting insights into the project and the state of research on brain-machine interfaces.

This podcast interview is part of our magazine issue The Quintessence of Human Machine Interfaces that is available free of charge on you mobile devices. Download our App and enjoy insights into various technology fields.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/tq-by-ebv/id573925762
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.EBV.TQApp&hl=gsw&gl=US

For a long time – and in many places still today – line production with assembly lines and fixed cycles was considered the pinnacle of rational production. It promised high, repeatable quality and cost-effective production. But in the meantime, the focus is shifting away from the mass production of a specific item to products configured individually for customers with ever shorter delivery times. In the smart factory, flexibility is the trump card. At the same time, companies need to increase their productivity and resilience in order to survive in global competition. We’ll be discussing how companies can master these challenges with our two guests in this episode, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Roman Dumitrescu, Director at Fraunhofer IEM, and Karl Lehnhoff, Director of the Segment Industrial, Scientific & Medical at EBV Elektronik.

For more information around the factory of the future visit: http://ebv.com/factory-automation