Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Communication and Knowledge – Big Data

Big data takes huge quantities of disparate data and puts it together for analysis. The information can come from all sorts of places: e-mails, online articles, comments on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, videos, photos, audio files or even measurement values. But wherever the information has come from, the aim remains the same – to spot patterns. But since these data sets are so huge and unordered, you can’t expect to make sense of them with a traditional database or conventional analysis tools. Now new data mining tools and techniques are to make these mountains of data useful and manageable. The intention is to use the insights gained commercially.

Kommunikation und Wissen
 

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Smart Data – The stuff innovations are made of

Digital data play an essential role in the design, planning and control of industrial processes. As well as being needed as input, data are also generated and output in large quantities and can be utilized to develop new products, services, and business models. Fraunhofer collaborates with numerous companies in projects to develop concepts and methods that will enable the digital treasure trove to be utilized in a secure environment, thereby extracting more added value from industrial processes.

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Fraunhofer Big Data Alliance

To promote the exploitation of big data in Germany, Fraunhofer has established a big data initiative that allows the Fraunhofer Institutes to pool their expertise across sectors.

Fraunhofer Information and Communication Technology Group

The Fraunhofer Information and Communication Technology Group serves as a one-stop shop for industrial customers and media enterprises.

Reference project

Real-time tracking for live analyses - Fast as a puck, hard as ice hockey

How is the defense formation reacting to the line of attackers? How fast does the puck whizz over the ice? Analyses and game evaluations are an integral part of sports broadcasts. Until now, however, such game analyses could only be carried out after a game play.

Thomas von der Grün and Norbert Franke from the Fraunhofer Institute for Inte­grated Circuits IIS and Thomas Pellkofer from the jogmo world corp. and their approximately 20-strong research team have developed a localization technology that is specially adapted to the dynamic pace of ice hockey and is based on the measured transit times of radio signals. For the first time ever, it enables a variety of game analyses to be performed and displayed in real time. The system’s distin­guishing feature is its high measuring rate, with the position of the puck being measured 2000 times per second and the location of each player being determined 200 times per second.

This technology was used publicly for the first time during the hockey games at the 2019 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend in San José, USA. The player and puck data were analyzed in real time and prepared for the viewers − an absolute novelty. In the course of 2020 the system will be installed in all 32 stadiums of the National Hockey League.

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