Dig­i­tal Nature – Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion for Humans

For humans, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion means that their lives and activ­i­ties are aug­ment­ed and influ­enced by dig­i­ti­za­tion and inno­va­tion. The Dig­i­tal Nature exhi­bi­tion pro­vides nine poten­tial answers to what these changes can look like and which inno­va­tions could sim­pli­fy our work or broad­en our lives. In coop­er­a­tion with Munich Air­port, bay­ern design, the com­pe­tence cen­ter for design of the State of Bavaria, will present projects devel­oped by Bavar­i­an com­pa­nies and research insti­tu­tions to illus­trate the cur­rent state of sci­ence, busi­ness and design. Lab­Cam­pus GmbH (Munich) will com­ple­ment the Dig­i­tal Nature exhi­bi­tion with a unique inno­va­tion cen­ter, designed as a smart city, at the premis­es of Munich Air­port. Here, com­pa­nies, research insti­tu­tions, start-ups and cre­ative peo­ple have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op, test and present new products.

Robot­ics, dig­i­ti­za­tion and biodesign

The Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter will be pre­sent­ing two projects deal­ing with robot­ics. Rollin’ Justin is a plat­form for research in the field of ser­vice robot­ics, main­ly for house­hold appli­ca­tions and to assist astro­nauts in space. MIRO is a ver­sa­tile robot arm for med­ical appli­ca­tions. Its com­pact dimen­sions and low weight enable it to be used as a sur­gi­cal assis­tant at the oper­at­ing table.

Felix Pöt­tinger Design is work­ing on TRA­KA, a portable biosen­sor for extreme ath­letes that learns to cor­rect­ly inter­pret users’ emo­tions and, based on this knowl­edge, helps them opti­mize their movements.

For Konica/Minolta, FLU­ID Design has devel­oped a dig­i­tal work­place of the future: Work­place Hub. Hard­ware, soft­ware and an entire ecosys­tem of appli­ca­tions and ser­vices are com­bined in one IT plat­form. Thanks to its open, inno­v­a­tive and flex­i­ble design, Work­place Hub allows each user to work in a dynam­ic and spe­cial­ized fashion.

The Blue Pearl is a gen­uine pearl ear­ring with an inte­grat­ed head­set cre­at­ed by Nova Prod­ucts. A mobile phone can be con­nect­ed to the ear­ring via Blue­tooth and allows the wear­er to look ele­gant and work hands-free at the same time.

Workaround has devel­oped ProGlove-Mark, an intel­li­gent glove for work in logis­tics and pro­duc­tion. It scans bar­codes and 3D codes and pro­vides direct visu­al, acoustic and tac­tile feed­back. The oper­a­tor imme­di­ate­ly knows whether the work step has been car­ried out cor­rect­ly with­out hav­ing to look at the dis­play for verification.

Jer­seys, run­ning shoes and adapt­able pack­ag­ing – the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIT) Design Lab and PUMA will be pre­sent­ing their results on their biode­sign method: The prod­ucts are inter­spersed with liv­ing mate­ri­als such as algae or bac­te­ria to enhance ath­let­ic per­for­mance. Changes in the struc­ture of the liv­ing cells are assessed dig­i­tal­ly to allow ath­letes to adjust their exer­cise accordingly.

Stool around the World by Yves Ebnöther exem­pli­fies the poten­tial of pro­duc­tion that is con­nect­ed yet local. With the under­ly­ing para­met­ric con­fig­u­ra­tor, the user can trans­form a wood­en board of any size into a stool with such pre­ci­sion that it can be assem­bled with­out the use of glue. By vary­ing the input in the con­fig­u­ra­tor, new typolo­gies can be devel­oped in a play­ful man­ner – from stools and bench­es to tables and beds.

BioID has devel­oped Face Live­ness Detec­tion, soft­ware for live facial recog­ni­tion that can be used to encrypt sen­si­tive data dig­i­tal­ly. The live face recog­ni­tion algo­rithm dis­tin­guish­es between real and fake faces.

Dig­i­tal Nature will be on dis­play until May 15, 2019 and will be fol­lowed by bay­ern design’s exhi­bi­tion titled Dis­cov­er­ers start­ing June 28, 2019. The exhi­bi­tion series run­ning until ear­ly 2020 in Ter­mi­nal 2, lev­el 04, south­ern check-in area of Munich Air­port also will include Well Con­nect­ed and Smart Living.