Imec (Leuven, Belgium), a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, presents TEMPO: a unique cross-border collaboration between 19 research and industrial partners, funded by ECSEL Joint Undertaking which supports public-private partnerships in the EU. The three-year programme aims at developing process technology and hardware platforms leveraging emerging memory technologies for neuromorphic computing for future applications in mobile devices that need complex machine-learning algorithms. It is a one-of-a-kind collaboration effort to enable applications that now need cloud-based server racks, to be executed within battery-powered mobile devices such as cars and smartphones (at the edge of the internet-of-things).
To open or start a modern car, nobody has to use a key anymore. Today, miniature computers do the job, which are being upgraded by car manufacturers with more and more capabilities. These Smart Keys can do a lot more: For example, they provide information about the oil level, the remaining range, the filling level of the tank, the status of the doors and windows and the control of fully automatic parking and retrieval. To achieve all this smoothly, lithium-ion batteries with high energy density and capacity must be robust and reliable at the same time.
Microbially grown materials can be used to replace oil-based materials in various everyday consumer products – such as headphones. A project team comprising research scientists, industrial designers and documentarians wanted to prove this possible and produced a set of headphones in their project Korvaa, the plastic and leather components of which were grown by microbes. The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Aalto University produced the materials, Aivan took care of industrial design, and Fotoni Film documented and photographed the progress of the project.