German smart sensors for China

A high-ranking Chinese delegation of government officials dropped by a small German town last month: Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, the quaint provincial capital of a county of the same name in Upper Bavaria, counting around 27,000 citizens.

The group from China hailed from Shenzhen, the country’s third largest metropolis with a population nearing 20 million. The world’s fourth busiest container port sits at the central coast of southern China, connecting Hong Kong with the Chinese mainland. Shenzhen is a global center in technology, research, manufacturing, business and economics, finance and transportation. It is among the top ten cities with the largest economies – worldwide.

So what were distinct Chinese dignitaries looking for in the rural tranquility of Bavaria? The answer may surprise you: German sensor technology made by ASC.

A leading global tech hub, Shenzhen is often dubbed China’s Silicon Valley. Home to a zillion high-tech and software enterprises, it hosts renowned annual national and international events including China Hi-Tech Fair. Shenzhen’s rapid success since the 1980ies resulted in the Chinese government turning the metropolis into the country’s first special economic zone, a model city for others to follow.

Touring through France, Germany and Spain in March, the six-member Shenzhen city government delegation included the vice mayor and secretaries for science and technology as well as for industry and information technology. In Europe, they met with 14 companies, trade associations and other organizations to discuss opportunities to strengthen Shenzhen’s Strategic Emerging Industry Clusters that include ‘intelligent sensor solutions’.

Arriving in Pfaffenhofen to meet with the ASC team, they asked to understand how the company’s inertial sensor portfolio is utilized in the monitoring of bridges, buildings and other structures. Particularly, as the world’s longest bridge-tunnel sea crossing – the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge of 55 kilometers in length, which was opened in 2018 – is already being monitored with ASC sensors.

The aim was to establish strong relations and explore potential collaboration. The delegates – jointly with ASC’s own Chinese sales office in Nanjing, participating through a video link – received a demo of smart sensor systems ASC AiSys® with Controller Area Network (CAN) interface. Based on latest technologies including machine learning and adaptive artificial intelligence, these smart systems offer modular end-to-end solutions covering all steps from capturing the slightest inertial input values, implementing complex customized algorithms and analyzing extracted feature vectors in one compact sensor system.

ASC AiSys® smart sensor systems reliably track all properties and behaviors of individual components, structures, vehicles and machinery and are therefore used in real-time condition monitoring. However, the true benefit lies in their ability to merge historic with current data to predict future trends, fatigue and the evolution of critical parameters. Based on these analyses and predictions, for instance, a digital twin of existing infrastructure can be created that helps automate the monitoring process, making it efficient and significantly enhancing the timely maintenance of roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings and other essential infrastructure.

A near-term outcome of the recent Sino-German encounter was an invitation for ASC to exhibit at this year’s Shenzhen International Sensor Technology Exhibition. In the long run, the German town of Pfaffenhofen looks forward to providing more hallmark smart sensor technology to the second-largest economy in the world.

Learn more: https://www.asc-sensors.de/en/smart-sensor-systems