Industrial Digitalization for Society – A Learning Factory Concept based on Four Pillars

Abstract

The “Lernfabrik Fallenbrunnen” is a privately funded Learning Factory in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Its concept is to provide a platform to everybody to build and develop technical competences in different aspects of industrial digitalization and robotics. This is realized through four programs that act as pillars of the facility: Workshops, Theses, Events, and Projects. The first pillar includes offering several interactive Workshops to drive technology transfer with a focus on digitalization in the society. Mostly, pupils and students participate here. The Workshops comprise giving a theoretical overview of the topic followed by hands-on projects, thereby focusing equally on theory and practice. The Workshop topics are related to industrial digitalization and range from Collaborative Robotics, over Drones and Automation to 3D-Printing and Augmented and Virtual Reality. Further, scientific Theses are a focus topic of the Learning Factory. Here, the facility provides research opportunities to prospective undergraduate and postgraduate students to write their Bachelors, Masters or PhD Theses, respectively. For example, research regarding possible applications of collaborative Robots and their role as assistant to people with disability, techniques to make them smarter through marker-based localization system are some recent projects. As the next pillar, public Events and symposiums are organized to extend the transfer of knowledge. Hereby, the target group are all the people who are interested. Furthermore, the Learning Factory demonstrates several research projects at different fairs. Finally, research Projects at the Learning Factory are carried out by professional researchers through working on various funded projects to innovate digitalization processes. A wide range of industrial oriented projects, like the industrialization of a Time-of-Flight 3D-Camera or the visualization of a 3D-print simulation in Augmented Reality are addressed. Additionally, the experts support the Theses, conduct the Workshops and are speakers at the Events.