From 21 to 23 October 2022, the "AI Challenge Days" took place at the SmartFactoryOWL in Lemgo. This 40-hour programming competition was about combining the topics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and product sustainability. The event was organised by the AICommunityOWL and the AI Living Lab, a project of Fraunhofer IOSB-INA. At the hackathon, which took place for the first time in presence, a total of 17 AI enthusiasts from all over Germany came together to develop solutions in four teams for a challenge around CUNA manufacturing.
The CUNA production facility at SmartFactoryOWL is a state-of-the-art plastic production plant for sustainable, bio-based returnable cups. Specifically, the challenge involved a data-supported prediction of the energy consumption of certain production parts with the help of self-learning algorithms. The background is that rising electricity prices represent a challenge for manufacturing companies. By forecasting energy consumption, it is possible to estimate how much electricity CUNA manufacturing will need for orders, so that in interaction with weather data it is possible to determine, for example, when renewable energies can be used most effectively for production. By using a larger share of renewable energy instead of fossil energy, the CO2 balance of production is improved.
First place and the prize money of 1000 euros went to the team around the two inIT employees Daniel Antonow from the research group "Interconnected Automation Systems" (Head: Prof. Henning Trsek) and Baris Sürmeli from the research group "Mathematics and Authentication" (Head: Prof. Helene Dörksen) as well as the former inIT employee Benedikt Eiteneuer.