More than 50 participantsaccepted the invitation of the Car Repair 4.0 consortium to its first virtual information event. Focus: The presentation of the eight consortium partners and their shared goals as well as cooperation opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
By Ralf Schädel, IT Editor and Project Manager Cloud Services and Gaia-X at eco – Association of the Internet Industry
Moderator Dr. Jan Hendrik Schoenke from LMIS AG got straight to the point after briefly welcoming the more than 50 participants to the first public information event of the Car Repair 4.0 funding project: “We can expect three hours of exciting content today.” In addition to an introduction of each consortium partner and their role within the project, event attendees could look forward to a detailed project presentation with opportunities for collaboration as well as a “Question & Answer” session.
The eight consortium partners in focus
The round of presentations was opened by the measurement hardware supplier Auto Intern, followed by the certification specialist Dekra Digital, the leading and business-oriented research institution of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), eco– Association of the Internet Industry, the research-intensive Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, LMIS as the consortium leader and Gaia-X member, the research experts in human- and data-driven process design at the Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences (THGA), and last but not least, the tire and car service experts at Vergölst.
Gaia-X arouses great interest
The participants were interested in the use of Explainable AI (XAI) mentioned in the presentations and the benefits that this methodology offers to users. Schoenke: “We don’t want to create dependencies, but rather transport attitudes and values as with Gaia-X and a digital sovereignty with Car Repair 4.0.” The consortium wants to advance digitalisation and make AI more widespread, but AI should not lead to a child-like dependence on the technology. Therefore, AI must be explainable on different levels.
Gaia-X’s influence on Car Repair 4.0
The audience also wanted to learn more about the implementation of Gaia-X Federation Services (GXFS): For example, to what extent the Eclipse DataSpace Connector (EDC) data transfer component is used in the Car Repair 4.0 project. According to Schoenke, this is a question that has preoccupied the project since the start of the funding competition: “Gaia-X offers different technologies that are being discussed or, in some cases, are already in place. For the course of our project, it’s an advantage that these technologies are already under development,” he says. However, the project manager was reluctant to reveal which technologies would ultimately drive Car Repair 4.0 forward at this stage and to anticipate possible results. The most important goal: Information-level interoperability to connect different data spaces and achieve scalable effects of digitalisation.
Numerous participants are key
More information was needed by the associated partners on the importance of the visibility of Car Repair 4.0 and the contributing car repair shops: For Schoenke, this is a clear-cut case: “The more support the flagship project gets, the easier it will be to collect the data. The AI that is being developed and the diagnostics built on it will be correspondingly better.” The broad impact and scaling that is to be achieved together with the THGA is precisely the reason why all interested car repair shops are cordially invited to join the project! Even if more than the 200 diagnostic devices currently available were needed, there is a plan for such an eventuality.
Cooperation possibilities and contact persons
There is also a plan for networking the project: A partner management team consisting of the contact persons Juan Hahn (Hahn Network) for the automotive sector, Hauke Timmermann (eco) for the IT sector and Yannick Bartholomäus (LMIS) for project networking is available to interested parties from the automotive sector, AI developers, measurement system manufacturers and IT service providers.
Did you like this article? Then subscribe to our Newsletter and receive regular updates on similar topics and on the car repair project, and discuss this and similar exciting topics with us in our LinkedIn group.
