Once again this year, the public meta-milestone meeting of the HUMAINE competence center took place in the form of the spring fair. On April 11, 2024, around 150 participants and consortium partners visited the fair in the ZESS research building. On the following day, exhibitors from the HUMAINE network took the opportunity to present themselves to an AI-interested audience of students and graduates at the subsequent career fair.

 

Transfer HUB for human-centered work with AI

The development and integration of AI into operational work processes requires a multi-actor perspective that takes into account developers, users, managers, top management and employee representatives in equal measure and thus contributes to reliable AI solutions. This form of engagement with work design goes hand in hand with reducing acceptance problems, increasing productivity and quality and ultimately improving work design. This form of organizational change, in which decision-makers are aware of their responsibility and develop reliable solutions, can be successively shaped using the tools in the HUMAINE Toolbox. The interdisciplinary team from various fields such as ergonomics, psychology, computer science and engineering presented the project results of the last three years together with the consortium’s practice partners in the form of the HUMAINE Spring Fair.

 

“Always one step ahead” – Foundation of the HUMAINE Network e.V.

A major step was also taken towards the continuation of the competence center: the founding meeting for the HUMAINE Network e.V. took place in the run-up to the spring trade fair. This network association secures the results achieved for regional transfer, facilitates the further development of the project consortium and secures the existence of the HUMAINE competence center beyond the duration of the project. Twenty-three founding members signed the association’s articles of association and subsequently elected the association’s board.

 

HUMAINE as a regional transfer network between science and application

The welcome of the Director of the ZESS research building(Center for the Engineering of Smart Product-Service Systems) and HUMAINE co-spokesperson, Professor Bernd Kuhlenkötter, was followed by motivating words from Mayor Züleyha Demir. In her welcoming address, she highlighted the rapid developments in the research and technology community at Mark 51°7. The Rectorate of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, represented by Chancellor Dr. Christina Reinhardt, looked back on the past three project years and the previous application together with the Competence Center team. The project manager, Professor Uta Wilkens, then opened the decentralized part of the event and gave it a scientific context. She emphasized the added value of interdisciplinarity in order to turn AI potential into successful AI use, the illustration of the positive effects in the corporate context and the advantages of continuation in the form of the HUMAINE Network e.V. for the participation of other companies in the project results.

 

The exhibits show the first successful applications and provide insights into the HUMAINE toolbox

With more than 20 exhibits for visitors to see and experience for themselves, the project consortium presented the project results from method development and pilot applications to the interested public. In addition to demonstrators for speech recognition and therapy support in speech therapy, AI in digital product service systems or image recognition in quality assurance, visitors were able to visit the human-AI role laboratory set up at ZESS and try it out for themselves. Practical partners from the pilot applications also took the opportunity to showcase the progress and results of their applications and experiences with AI. As a result, there were many opportunities for intensive exchange between partners and interested parties from research and practice.

 

The HUMAINE competence center team can look back on a successful spring trade fair.

 

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Photos © RUB, Marquard