With the UFO to the test site in Lusatia

From Stephan Schön

It moves quite strangely. It shakes, turns and stops abruptly. And rolls away. No, this UFO doesn't fly. It is quite down to earth. On wheels and a frame on top that gives the marble above it a good shake. Together with its occupants. These are the first rides of the Dresden driving simulator. After all, the marble contains a car cockpit. And a large video wall in front of the windshield. This is used to rehearse real road scenes for autonomous driving. The software is trained for real life in the city. Traffic lights, crosswalks, bicycles, traffic jams and emergency braking because of an accident ahead.

What Günther Prokop presented yesterday at the test site in Freital actually belongs in Lusatia. To Hoyerswerda. Prokop is a professor of automotive engineering at the TU Dresden. His new job: He is in charge of setting up a mega-laboratory in Lusatia, the Smart Mobility Lab (SML). It is unique in Germany and aims to make autonomous driving and the autonomous flying of drones a reality here. Yesterday was the kick-off in Freital, the construction approval for the construction company Goldbeck GmbH with a company site in Bautzen.

But why Freital then? For Günther Prokop and the other teams, this is the ideal place to get started with their research: The area here on the outskirts of the city is large and open, asphalted and has a hall in front of it. The drones will be flying here until 2027. This is where the swarm, a group of autonomous agricultural vehicles, learns how to farm. Max and Moritz will learn how to work here. Picking up parts very carefully, delivering them precisely and not running over each other while sprinting through the workshop. It is swarm intelligence that the computer scientists at TU Dresden are giving their new team of autonomous robots.

Robots are to act as avatars for humans, using telerobotics to carry out difficult, heavy and dangerous tasks. For Uwe Aßmann, the computer science professor and software technologist, robots like Max and Moritz are one of many ideas that will learn to walk on their own in Hoyerswerda. Including company spin-offs that not only multiply this know-how, but also create jobs in the region.

This is the main reason why the Free State is spending around 90 million euros from its structural funds for the coal-mining region. "We have to build something new in this region before the old is gone," says Saxony's Minister-President Michael Kretschmer (CDU), explaining the reasons for this investment in the Smart Mobility Lab Hoyerswerda. It is research that will become companies. "We have to ensure that alternatives are created for the children and grandchildren here," says Kretschmer. This is structural change as Saxony understands it and is relying on science and research like no other federal state.

A hall 40 meters high and 100 by 100 meters in size is being built for this purpose in Hoyerswerda. Drones, driving simulators and robots will then share this space. They have to learn not to disturb each other while flying, driving and sparking. And just as it's not always a super summer outside, the technology in the test hall also gets uncomfortable from time to time. A huge fan that draws megawatts of electricity creates a storm in the laboratory. The sprinkler system brings the heavy rain to match. It is a stress test for the university's autonomous vehicles and aircraft.

This service robot is called Moritz. With lots of sensors and the ability to communicate with other robots of its type in order to work together. Photo: SZ/Veit Hengst

In the new Smart Mobility Lab, drones will then train to fly autonomously. Even in storms and rain. TU Professor Hartmut Fricke wants to develop drones as suppliers. Photo: SZ/Veit Hengst

There are actually many of them, but here you can only see one of the Swarm, the swarm of agricultural machinery. From analyzing the condition of the soil and plants to tilling the fields, it will work largely autonomously, cooperating with the others in the swarm. Photo: SZ/Veit Hengst

The technology in this lab will be refined right through to the approval of autonomous aircraft and vehicles. Construction will start in January 2025 and science will move in from 2027. With a viewing platform for citizens on top. And a large open space for the technology in front of it. A test site where the streets of an entire city district can be recreated. An autonomous airfield will also be built there, with internationally standardized lights and markings, just like on any normal airfield.

Europe's largest flight zone for autonomous flying is being created here. It stretches from Hoyerswerda, via Kamenz airfield, to Görlitz and on to Weißwasser. This will be reserved airspace for the researchers' drones. Until they take off from there, however, the TU is using the airfield in Magdeburg-Cochstedt in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center, announces Hartmut Fricke, Saxony's Aerospace Coordinator. Fricke is also a professor at TU Dresden and supervises the flying autonomous devices from the Smart Mobility Lab in Hoyerswerda.

And if things go well, the new devices will also be allowed out into real life. First in and around Hoyerswerda, which they have already gotten to know digitally.