An autonomous driving cleaning robot circles around an Ulmer car park and is cleaning the floor. But what other tasks could be done as well, how could the robot be optimized and what other functions can be implemented as well? This is one of the challenges, on which the solvers are working on with the open innovation process to search for digital solutions.

On the 14.03.2018 all solvers and seekers met in the assembly hall of the University of Applied Science in Ulm. Sixty-one young talents came to meet up in there teams and to get to know the challenges and respective seekers.

The Entrepreneurship Training will be performed by BWCON together with the university. It contains the main bases for a business start-up. "So that good ideas turns into good business ideas", saying Lord Mayer Gunter Czisch.

The University of Applied Science was acquired as an important cooperation partner for the open innovation lab in Ulm. The university is involved with the courses engineering and mechatronics.  Prof. Ben Dippe says: "The University of Applied Science Ulm stands for outstanding and practical technical competence for decades. Together with colleagues of different faculties we emphasizes that the young people get to know as well the entrepreneurial side of Innovation. The region in Ulm lives from wealth of ideas and we are pleased to make a contribution to this."

During the Kick-Off the different companies and institutions, presented their challenges and gave some background about there companies.

The start was made with the autonomous driving cleaning robot from the company ADLATUS. The robot was bought from the Parkbetriebsgesellschaft, who is responsible from all car parks in Ulm. The cleaning robot will have great benefits, but instead of only cleaning the floor, many other tasks could be done by the robot as well. A very common problem while cleaning the floor are chewing gums, sticking on the floor, not looking very attractive. Removing old chewing gums is a very stressful and time-consuming job to do. So just one of the questions could be how a special function can be implemented for removing these chewing gums.

The next company presenting was CALLOM GmbH, who are developing intelligent door communication systems. With an interesting video and an interactive model they introduced the product to the young talents. They bringing in the following questions to the open innovation lab: Your conversation with Alexa and Siri are funny, but not very helpful in everyday life? Solutions like KNX or Hue are smart, but can not be linked together? In the topic Smart Home, you can let your creativity run free. How can a smart home communication system look like and how can it offer you real added value in everyday life?

The next challenge deals with the packaging of pharmaceutical products in blisters and bottles. The challenge is given by is one of the world’s leading systems suppliers in this field. The challenge brings up the question how a special form of pills can be sorted effectively into the respective blisters. What possibilities and new ways could be developed?

Last but not least, the public utility of Ulm and Neu-Ulm deals with the question "How can I make (regional) electricity sexy?" What kind of product or service is necessary that customers identify themselves with "their regional electricity"?  How can the sustainability be strengthen and emphasized in the mind of the customers?

All challenges raised interests, so that at the moment on each challenge 3-5 teams are working on innovative and digital solutions. Once the teams met with the seekers, further meetings at the companies were organized, to get to know the company and challenge in detail.