As part of the Master's degree programme in Information Technology, around 30 international students took part in an excursion to HANNOVER MESSE 2025 under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Jasperneite, member of the Board of the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) at Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe (TH OWL). The world's leading industrial trade fair took place from 31 March to 4 April 2025 under the motto ‘Energizing a Sustainable Industry’ and offered a wide range of new products and solutions from the fields of automation, digitalisation and sustainable production processes.
A particular focus this year was on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in industrial automation and production. Students were given exciting insights into current developments in machine learning, autonomous systems and generative AI. Companies and research institutions presented advanced technologies that are making the engineering and operation of machines and systems increasingly efficient, flexible and sustainable. For example, a foundation model for time series analysis was presented at the Lenovo stand, which was pre-trained on extensive data from various industries, while the teleoperation of robots was demonstrated at the stand of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). At the stand of the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA), Dr. Stefanie Hittmeier and Dennis Heitkamp (both Fraunhofer IOSB-INA) showed how generative AI can be used to automatically generate interoperable software structures - so-called administration shells (AAS) - from documents or images.
In addition to the technical innovations, career prospects were also at the centre of the trade fair visit. The employees at the stands gave personal insights into their career paths and discussed future requirements and opportunities in the IT sector with the students.