The ETFA, the "IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation", was able to take place in presence again for the first time this year after a hybrid event in 2020 and a digital-only event in 2021. The conference took place from 06 to 09 September in its 27th edition and is one of the world's most important technical conferences for emerging technologies in the context of factory automation. This year, it was organized and held by the University of Stuttgart.
Dr. Lukasz Wisniewski, Maxim Friesen and Arne Neumann from inIT organized together with Dr. Gianluca Cena and Dr. Stefano Scanzio from the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IEIIT) and Prof. Mikael Gidlund from Mid Sweden University a Special Session on "Advanced Methods for the Management of Factory Networks".
inIT board member Prof. Henning Trsek was co-responsible for the Technical Track "Industrial Communication Technologies and Systems" as a member of the program committee. The focus was on industrial communication technologies and the characterization of application requirements, implementations, validation, performance evaluations and case studies. Security topics were represented by the papers of inIT employees Andre Bröring and Lisa Gebauer.
In addition, Dr. Lukasz Wisniewski from inIT together with Prof. Jos Knockaert from Ghent University and Dr. Philippe Saey from KU Leuven organized a workshop on "Enabling Robust, Converged Networks for Industry 4.0", which was presented by Oliver Konradi from inIT, among others.
inIT employee Philip Sehr was very satisfied with the event afterwards: "Many high-quality contributions were presented at this year's ETFA. The return to a face-to-face event also ensured that an intensive scientific exchange was possible." The return to a face-to-face event was well appreciated by the participants. It provided an opportunity for researchers, developers and practitioners from different industries, research institutes and universities to share ideas, establish new partnerships and develop existing ones. Next year, ETFA 2023 will take place in Sinaia, Romania, certainly again with high participation of inIT.