Alexander Viehl

An exciting time

FZI is not just about academic research but especially about applied research and technology transfer. “We’re always having discussions with industry, what they really want to have and what is missing. For that reason, the topic I had presented was in demand in this particular ITEA project VERDE. So, I wrote a proposal and went off to Paris armed with only two slides and some text. In the morning, we met and discussed the work package structure and objectives and so on. And then it was time for lunch and the culture shock of the southern European way – plenty of red wine and socialising. Was this also the ITEA way, I asked myself. The morning had been so productive that they felt we hardly had anything to discuss in the afternoon. In short, the project was accepted and I became the national coordinator. It was really exciting for me because this level of project management was new, as was this European structure, the different styles of working, scheduling a meeting for one hour that ended up being three hours or more, with people talking French in the corner. It was fascinating, but we had very productive workshops, very intelligent partners, and targets with fast, exploitable results. This really motivated me because this was a very good fit with our objectives at FZI. I was also working on my own research and finishing my PhD at the time. On top of that, we also acquired a very good FP7 project, and I also had the lead in that. I finally managed to finish my PhD, which allowed me the time and opportunity to take over the department.”

Proof of the pudding

Alexander ramped up the ITEA collaboration in 2012 when he attended ITEA Project Outline (PO) Preparation Days Days in Madrid that was “full of very interesting discussions,” he recalls. “I’d never been to Madrid before or maybe not inside the city. Not only was I treated to a mix of new cultures and ideas but it was also very constructive. A year and a half later, the project MACH got started. A long wait, but things are much faster now. After all, the needs of the industry might already shift within that long period. When that project ended, I proposed ideas to ITEA in three consecutive years and all of those got funded. In 2016, my career took a new turn when I was promoted to become Division Manager for the Intelligent Systems and Production Engineering Division, which included not only a focus on embedded hardware/software systems and model-based systems engineering, but also on AI and intelligent systems in general. Like engineering methods or better generalisation tools, algorithms for autonomous driving, algorithms or concepts for robots. Always in very close collaboration with industry. We put theory to the test. In my division, we have, for example, autonomous vehicles that are allowed to drive on open roads as well as a lot of robots and robotic components that can be deployed to industrial settings as well as on space missions. We have real labs for mobility, robotics and energy systems. It’s all about improving the state of the art for solutions that have real impact and that bring benefits.” The link with the ITEA vision is clear. “ITEA projects are important,” Alexander explains, “because they are actually the proof of the pudding. They put concepts into applications that have been proven to work, to benefit industry and society. And industry understands the necessity.”