Innovative approaches in signal processing will enable the initialization of a rethinking of how the production process is rendered: from individual, isolated production steps towards a consideration of products along their complete lifecycle as one unit. It becomes increasingly evident that such a change requires a fundamental rethinking of how data is acquired in this context. A more efficient data acquisition and processing can be projected onto various application fields:

Possible Application Fields

To capture, describe and optimize all material changing process steps in the lifecycle of products, the sensor (or: the system made of melded and combined deployed sensor modalities) is required to become intelligent by scanning the relevant data related to the product and its changes that it is going through during the production process, processing them further immediately and evaluating specific material-related information (Smart Materials Data).

There are various application fields and business areas for the employment of smart material data in the product life cycle, such as in production fields of industry in areas like automotive, rail, aviation. Furthermore, results are applicable for energy and infrastructure sector and bioengineering and agricultural industry. They all benefit from the comprehensive lossless monitoring along the product life cycle (see figure below).

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