EXPO Day 5 | STARTUP AUTOBAHN

Winfried Kretschmann

Minister President

State of Baden-Württemberg

As the co-initiator of The Green Party, Winfried Kretschmann could probably consider himself the founder of a Startup as well.

Politically active since his time as a student, Kretschmann and other like-minded associates established The Green Party in Baden-Württemberg in 1979. One year later, Winfried Kretschmann became a member of the first parliamentary group of The Green Party to be elected to the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg. In 1986, he was appointed by Hessen’s Minister of the Environment Joschka Fischer as a policy advisor to the first Green Party Ministry of the Environment. After two years in Wiesbaden, he returned to the Baden-Wurttemberg State Parliament in 1988, where he has remained ever since with only one period out of office. In 2002, Kretschmann was elected Chairman of the Green Party in parliament which he remained until 2011.

On May 12, 2016, Winfried Kretschmann was re-elected Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg in the State Parliament, gaining 82 of 142 votes.

Kretschmann has been married to his wife Gerlinde since 1975. The couple have three adult children. A keen DIY enthusiast, Kretschmann is able to unwind best working around the house and garden or hiking in the hills of the Schwäbische Alb.

Saeed Amidi

CEO & Founder

Plug and Play Tech Center

Besides his role as the CEO and Founder of Plug and Play Tech Center Saeed also holds the position of General Partner in Amidzad. The fund has been investing in technology companies for over 15 years and holds successful investments in over 1,000 technology companies, some of which are: PayPal, Powerset, Danger, Bix, Powerset, DropBox, Lending Club, Zoosk, etc.

A serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with over 28 years of experience in founding, operating, and growing successful companies. He has successfully started and grown businesses both nationally, as well as internationally, in countries like: Spain, Germany, France, and Austria.

Saeed’s current passion is inspiring and helping entrepreneurs and startups out of universities. His objective is to identify great entrepreneurs with a passion to execute on their ideas.

Saeed is an active member of the technology community and a frequent contributor to numerous charitable foundations. He is also an active member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), a world-class network of Fortune 500 CEOs, accomplished serial entrepreneurs, and veteran financial executives.

Hui Zhang

Managing Director

NIO GmbH

NIO the user enterprise

The future is in smart, electric and autonomous vehicles, and NIO aims to lead the next generation car company. NIO is a Chinese automobile manufacturer headquartered in Shanghai, specializing in designing and developing safe electric autonomous vehicles.

Tim Smith

Global Auto & Mobility Director

ustwo fampany ltd

Originally from North Wales, Tim moved to London in 2005 to begin his career as a graphic and user experience designer.

Before turning his attention to the challenges of the automotive and mobility world, Tim specialised in designing for “human–to–whatever” interaction, as he calls it. Starting his career designing weird and wonderful interactive packaging for the likes of PlayStation, he quickly moved on to digital design, where he furthered his interest in Human–Machine Interaction (HMI) working on everything from Natural History Museum gestural interactives and Tate Modern digital art installations to Samsung smartphones, smart TVs and smart fridges - he even worked on an interface for a cow milking machine.

Nowadays, Tim focuses on studying, exploring and designing for human behaviour in and around the car, including autonomous vehicles, along with transportation and mobility services. Tim co-wrote the first book ever released on UX design for autonomous vehicles: "Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going?" and has since gone on to write many articles and talked at many events on the subject of user–centred design for automotive and mobility, as well as working on products and services with Ford, Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan to name a few.

In 2018, Tim was recognised by BIMA as one of the top 100 influencers in UK digital design. Tim has a collection of over 1,000 toy cars and growing.

A user–centred design approach to driverless cars

What will we want from driverless cars of the future? What are our human needs for the technology? We need to understand the answers to these questions so that we can design the technology in a way that can be adopted by all - not the fortunate few. Following the release of ustwo Auto’s second book, Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going?, Tim‘s talk draws on some of the key insights from the research and user testing that the book is built around and shows off some real world user–centred designs for driverless cars.

Jan Heitmann

poker-expert, keynote speaker, coach

Jan Heitmann is Germany’s best known Poker-Expert. He has been playing poker since 1998, with 15 years as a professional poker player on the highest international levels. Additionally, he works as a TV commentator (DSF, Pro7 and Sport1), a poker coach and the trainer of the celebrity guests for the TVTotal Pokernacht with Stefan Raab.

Nowadays, he is a sought after keynote speaker and explains the strategies and concepts world class poker players use to make better decisions under uncertainty. Curious how decision makers can learn and profit from the knowledge of professional poker players?

Find out more at the StartUp-Autobahn Expo Day.

The thinking of a poker player - decisions under uncertainty

Poker and business have a lot in common: the bad players often do not know, what kind of game they are even playing. Poker works great as a model for decision making. There is something to be gained (the pot in the middle), something you have to risk for it (by betting), all under time pressure and financial restraints, against competent competition, under uncertainty and incomplete information. Using Poker as a model, Jan Heitmann explains concepts and strategies used by world class poker players to make better decision under uncertainty. Be sure to check out his talk at the Interactive stage!

Patrice Bouédibéla

Presenter | Host

Patrice stands for all elements of an state of the art presenter enhanced by an 21st century. Influencer profile – up to date, modern and always dedicated to highly topical subjects. Known for understatement in his appearance, his „look & feel“ is by far fitting the occasion. Sporty look, trend setter or a touch of modern luxury underlining his uniqueness.His intellectual curiosity is one of his main divers and motivators and as such is responsible for his passion for new technologies and trends. Being „ahead of the curve“ with regards to sectors like the car industry, consumer electronics and fashion is a must for him and therefore part of his daily life. His love for traveling and his constant thrive to learn about cultures and people is another cornerstones for his steady motivation to expand his knowledge and to widen his horizon to enrich his pool of inspiration & content. Nevertheless the kid inside of him never died. This empowers him to be authentic, friendly in a natural and sympathetic manner which makes him interesting for consumers, users, brands and TV stations

On the fields of his journalistic/editorial activity Patrice is able to decode complex information and context for the specific target groups. He has the skill to present interesting and entertaining information in an uplifting and easy way. Patrice is building bridges between product/content and target group. From a marketing standpoint he is connecting the dots between brand message and product. He explains and envisions and shares the details also via his own channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. His believe that exceptional product/brand promotion can only be leveraged by trust, honesty and attention to detail fuels back to trustworthiness. At the bottom of his DNA music, movies and entertainment are deeply rooted and play an important role in his professional and private life. Over the last years Patrice Bouédibéla discovered his passion for photography and thus a new field to develop. His current project „4ShadesByPB“ features black and white pictures in a set of four pictures of humans that Patrice got to know personally and appreciates.

Gero Adrian

Client Principal, Manufacturing Expert

DXC

Gero Adrian has a long history in the manufacturing and aviation industry. Based on this exceptional experience he is now heading a team of industry experts to focus on the development of new business models and products for DXC’s Industrie4.0 segment. Gero Adrian has an engineering degree and a MBA in International Management.

Ralf Bretting

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

carIT

Ralf is deputy editor-in-chief of the B2B trade magazines carIT, automotiveIT and AUTOMOBIL PRODUKTION. He has his finger on the pulse of digital transformation in both the tech industry and the automotive sector and writes regularly about the mobility of the future. He lives in Stuttgart and works wherever wheels roll.

Stephan Dörner

Editor-in-Chief

t3n

Stephan is editor in chief of t3n.de, a German tech magazine covering digital business. He lives in Berlin and Hanover and is covering tech, digital business and startups since 2007.

Zheng Guo (Sam)

CEO of Lab1886 China

Daimler

Mr. Sam GUO is CEO of Lab1886 China, the Chinese branch of Daimler’s global Incubator. The company hosts Startup Autobahn China to enable cooperation between top startups with industrial giants, empowering the journey of No Limits in the nation with rising innovation spirit.

Norman Hartmann

Co-Founder

Workerbase

Christina Ibrom

Head of UX/UI Advanced Engineering

Daimler

Christina Ibrom has extensive expertise in the field of automotive electronics. With a graduate degree in electrical engineering, Christina started her career at Mercedes-Benz in 1996 in the area of planning, thereafter gaining further experiences in quality management and production. In 2005 she took over responsibility for various functions of user interaction series development across all Mercedes-Benz Cars. As the head of UX/UI Advanced Engineering since 2018, her great passion is to develop groundbreaking holistic user experiences for Mercedes-Benz customers.

Sascha Karimpour

Managing Partner

Plug & Play Germany GmbH

Sascha Karimpour is part of Europes biggest innovation platform. Since 2016 he works as Managing Director for Plug & Play Germany GmbH and brought the Silicon Valley Spirit to Germany. He is based in Stuttgart, where he manages the open innovation platform STARTUP AUTOBAHN, a platform that unites global young tech companies with the unique tech expertise of Silicon Valley and the best of German engineering. A total of 150 startups graduated from the innovation platform, with more than 220 pilot projects in the field of mobility, IoT and enterprise 2.0. Besides Plug & Play Germany opened platforms in Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt covering the topics RetailTech, Healthcare, Insurtech, Fintech, Energy and Supply Chain. Before he came to Germany, Sascha had been VP of Corporate Relations for the DACH region for Plug and Play Tech Center located in Silicon Valley. Previously he worked for various startups and established the North American division of a traditional German trading company in Chicago. With his entrepreneurial Spirit, he took it to his passion, to push innovation through collaboration!

Fatmir Kqiku

Head of Robotics and Automation Consulting

DXC North and Central Europe

Specialized in complex and innovative solutions including intelligent process automation, Services commercialization for automated delivery models. Fatmir supports clients in Extending, Enhancing, Enriching, and Empowering their organizations in the extraction of genuine business value. Currently focusing on applying Intelligent Automation in support of business transformation.

Patrick Kück

Director Strategy & Innovation

Porsche

Patrick Kück is responsible for strategy and innovation at Porsche. The vision: To be the most successful brand for exclusive and sporty mobility. New technologies and business models are driving the transformation of the automotive industry. Porsche is taking a proactive approach, seeking to explore new opportunities to shape the future of the sports car. Therefore, new competencies are necessary. Porsche is well aware that partnerships are the key to success and is creating an open innovation ecosystem. Startup Autobahn is one platform to find companions for the way to the future of mobility.

Marcus Kühne

Chief Innovation Officer

holoride

Marcus is co-founder and Chief Innovation Offiver of holoride - a startup from Munich, that is going to introduce a new immersive in-vehicle entertainment format, which was succesfully presented with the initial partner and investor Audi and Disney at the CES 2019 (4x Best of CES). Marcus has studied Interface Design and worked for Audi at the product marketing, electronic development and digital business department, where he introduced several new technologies, filed more than 100 patents and finally was in charge for Audis immersive tech strategy. Beginning of 2019 he left Audi with his co-founders Nils Wollny (former Head of Digital Business of Audi) and Daniel Profendiner (autonomous driving expert) to set up holoride as an independent company, that is able to establish an industry wide standard / platform.

Ralf Lamberti

CEO Daimler Brand & IP Management, Director Trends & Innovation

Daimler

Ralf Lamberti, born in Duisburg 1959, studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and Business Administration at the University of Aachen. In 1987, he joined Daimler AG in the field of Central Production Planning. Further, he held diverse positions in the fields of Project Management, Controlling, Assistance, CAD/CAM, Process Design, Documentation and Logistics, leading to his engagement in the Pre-Development of Daimler AG. In his last position, Mr. Lamberti worked for the pre- and series development Connected Car & User Interaction for all Mercedes Benz series. Today, he is CEO of the Daimler Brand & IP Management GmbH & Co. KG and responsible for Intellectual Property, Trends & Innovation.

Dr. Gisela Linge

Director Corporate Strategy

Webasto

Yannick Polchow

Editor

carIT

Yannick is editor and head of special publications of the B2B trade magazines carIT, automotiveIT and AUTOMOBIL PRODUKTION. He is covering digital transformation in the auto industry and technology buzz of future mobility since 2014. He works and lives in Hannover.

Matthias Röse

Chief Technologist for Manufacturing, Automotive & IoT

HPE

Matthias serves as global Chief Technologist for Hewlett Packard Enterprise´s Industry Vertical Manufacturing, Automotive & IoT worldwide, based out of Germany. He joined HPE from Siemens in 2006. His background in the consulting space means that he has great expertise in both, the OT and the IT world. Bridging the gap between business and IT became crucial for the majority of the companies and Matthias is one of the leaders within HPE driving this opportunity.

Frank Ruff

Senior Manager of PIONEERING Next

Daimler AG

Frank Ruff is head of the department “PIONEERING NeXt” in Group Research of Daimler AG. His team is dedicated to innovate and shape the future of mobility and transport, by scouting next generation technologies and social trends, creating scenarios for mobility and transport, combining customer insights and idea generation in the INNOVATION STUDIO and leveraging open innovation platforms like STARTUP AUTOBAHN.

Simon Schumacher

Project Manager Future Work Lab

Fraunhofer IPA

Simon Schumacher works as a research associate and Ph.D. candidate at the competence center Digital Tools in Manufacturing at Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart. His research focuses on the digital transformation of manufacturing systems. At Fraunhofer IPA, Simon Schumacher is the project manager of the Future Work Lab – an innovation lab addressing the technical and socioeconomic challenges of industrial work in smart factories.

Björn Spinzig

IT-Consultant

Wieland

Björn Spinzig is a software developer and business consultant at Wieland-Werke AG in the department of Technology and Development. His focus is on software development in the area of MES quality data acquisition and in the SAP QM environment.

Christoph Stadeler

Director Automotive

EMEA Facebook

Christoph is Director Automotive at Facebook in EMEA. In that role, he leads all major marketing and strategy initiatives to enable Facebook’s automotive partners leveraging Facebook’s family of apps to accelerate digital and mobile business transformation and to generate true business value. He also facilitates partner efforts with leading business consultants and global agency networks for the automotive vertical.

Christoph is a seasoned international marketing executive and digital evangelist. Prior to Facebook he was EVP, Global Client Officer-Automotive at Wunderman/WPP, the World’s #1 digital agency, responsible for the global client digital relationship for Ford and Land Rover. He served as CEO at McCann//MRM, Germany where he personally oversaw the GM EMEA relationship, as COO of BBDO InterOne, with BMW and Mini, and as CEO of Wunderman, Germany/CEE with Ford being his main client engagement. Throughout his career he focused on the Auto vertical, on integrated innovative marketing solutions and on digital transformation at scale. He started in consulting, servicing Fortune 500 clients in automotive, retail and telecom at The Boston Consulting Group.

Christoph holds a master’s degree in business from the EBS University (Frankfurt, Paris and London) and is lecturing at the EBS University on Digital Transformation for Auto.

Thomas Stark

Manager Innovation & Trends

Daimler AG

Alignement of demands Digital Transformation @ Mercedes Operations Trend- and on-demandscouting Piloting of innovative solutions.

Georg Stockinger

VC Investor

Paua Ventures

Georg Stockinger serves as a partner with Paua Ventures since early 2016. Having a mechanical engineering background, he is focusing on investments in enterprise software, industry 4.0 and AI. Before his time with Paua, Georg spent time as a management consultant with McKinsey, built up tech ventures in Germany, Spain and Mexico, and served as a Managing Director for Latin America with Rocket Internet.

Andy Toth

Investment Director, Germany

Plug & Play Germany GmbH

Charles Vaillant

CTO

MANN + HUMMEL

Charles Vaillant is a Solutions-focused Executive, CTO, with 25+ years of international leadership in innovation, business strategy, venturing, and digitalisation. An Expert at building cross-cultural teams for top performance to reduce time to market and drive revenue through Innovation. Highly creative, entrepreneurial and Michigan MBA graduate. He has experiences in the automotive and filtration industries.

Tim von Törne

Co-Founder & COO

Kopernikus Automotive

Tim von Törne has a passion for building digital businesses from scratch and scaling them internationally. After an early career in management consulting with projects across Europe he discovered his entrepreneurial passion and founded five companies so far (eyePROM, cellity, Pneusmart, Man & Stone, Kopernikus). He also played a key role in enabling early-stage companies grow substantially in Europe (Skype, QUELLE, e-dict gaming) and advised mature corporations on their international digital strategy (among them Nokia, Otto Group, Kanz/Kids Fashion Group).

He has worked on most of the relevant building blocks along the digital value chain; specific areas of expertise include automotive & mobility, mobile ecosystem, e-commerce, marketplaces & platforms as well as building, growing, and managing nimble startups in a corporate environment, where he was actively consulting corporates to innovate like startups and teaching startups to make money like corporates.

Michael Wilshire

Head of Strategy

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Michael leads BNEF’s strategic research into the energy sector, with a particular focus on the impact of emerging or disruptive technologies in transforming both energy and transport – including the Internet of Things, machine learning, analytics, and other hardware and software technologies. He has experience as a policy maker within government as well as two decades of management consulting at McKinsey, where he was a partner before joining BNEF as Head of Analysis. Michael originally worked in the Department of Energy in the late 1980s, providing policy advice to UK Government Ministers. He worked on the deregulation of the energy sector, nuclear policy and the privatisation of the electricity industry. At McKinsey, he advised clients in the energy, technology and telecommunications industries, where he worked for operators, hardware and software companies in over 20 different countries on technology, strategic, operational, and marketing issues. Michael has an MA in mathematics from Cambridge University and an MBA from the London Business School.

Jürgen Winterholler

CDO

Rolls Royce Power Systems

Jürgen is the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Digital Solutions for Rolls-Royce Power Systems (RRPS), a business unit founded in April 2017, and reports directly to the RRPS CEO. In this role, he is responsible for enabling and advancing digitalization for the company and oversees all aspects of RRPS’s digital transformation with the goal of positioning them as a strong leader in the digital future. To achieve this goal, Jürgen has tasked his team with creating new business models and opportunities for RRPS including the development of digital solutions. Jürgen first became part of the wider RRPS organization when he joined MTU Onsite Energy, a subsidiary of RRPS, in 2008 where he worked as the Director for Gas System Development then the Vice President of System Development with a global responsibility. Prior to this, he worked for MAN Gasturbines and E.ON, one of the largest utilities in Europe where he used his strong background in electrical engineering and software programming on many developments.

Heiko Zimmermann

Investment Manager bei M&A Technology and Venture

Daimler

Investment Manager – Technology & Venture

Heiko is part of Daimler’s Technology & Venture Team which is responsible for acquisitions and venture investments in automotive related technologies and services, new mobility solutions and a broad portfolio of top venture capital funds all over the world. Technology & Venture is always on the lookout for innovative businesses ranging from early stage start-ups to well-established technology companies.

Vishal Rai

CEO

Acellere

Acellere's platformGamma helps users write better code, smarter, every day. Gamma is an intelligent software analytics platform which reviews code, detects bugs, code smells and vulnerability issues. At its core, Gamma’s proprietary anti-pattern detection algorithms find design issues in code. Ranking code issues based on severity and complexity, Gamma creates prioritized lists and heatmaps of the most severe issues - so users can start working on the most crucial issues right away. Catering to both software developers and IT decision-makers alike, Gamma provides easy-to-read metrics and prioritizations of code issues, and rates users’ overall software quality in one comprehensive score. Gamma allows easy set-up and fast import of repositories, cloud-based and on-premise. Check out their Website

Aditya Premi

CTO

Ainak

Ainak AR is one of the world’s first on-site layout planners. It allows users to easily visualize large machines or equipment in 3D, be it in customer environments or in manufacturing, by making use of augmented reality. Take measures, make notes and make complete installation plans to seal a deal with external or internal customers. It provides a plug-and-play experience that easily brings 3D models via the cloud app to mobile devices in order to easily visualize multiple products and to create complete layout plans. Check out their Website

Zohar Fox

CEO

Aurora Labs

Aurora Labs’ Self-Healing SoftwareTM enables vehicle manufacturers to proactively respond to future vehicle software architectures, processes and services. By giving vehicle manufacturers the power to seamlessly detect potential software issues, fix and update them – they’re making the world of connected cars more predictable. Self-Healing Software enables detection of faults at a line-of-code resolution for shorter development cycles and quick updating for fast prototyping. Check out their Website

Frank Feulner

Chief Business Development Officer

AX Semantics

AX Semantics is a web service that writes stories and answers based on structured data. The core application speaks 110 languages, while the A.I.-assisted web-ui lets even non-technical staff configure AX Semantics in complete self-service. It works in real-time and is easily integrated via the REST API. The AX Semantics NLG platform is completely topic agnostic and can be used for any domain. Check out their Website

Dragos Grozavu

Founder & Chief Business Officer

Cogatech

Coga learns from various data sources and maps its workflows. By using their technology, Cogatech can measure the similarity of an incoming request across multiple dimensions. This allows to match the current booking request with similar ones, and handle it accordingly, e.g. book, cancel, change or answer. While the market is filled with systems of record and engagement, which analyze and organize the data, Coga goes a step further - it learns the processes and then performs tasks automatically, supercharging the enterprise. Check out their Website

Vahan Tchakerian

Global Sales and Field Operations Executive

Cogniac

Cogniac offers enterprise class A.I.-based deep learning software to automate visual inspection tasks. They enable enterprises to observe, inspect, and extract infor- mation from any source of visual image or video data. With cloud, pure-on-prem, and hybrid edge products, Cogniac is the shortest distance between your image data and actionable visual intelligence, primarily serving the industrial manufacturing and industrial inspection markets. Typical applications include transportation, logistics, packaging and safety. Check out their Website

Steffen Iwan

Head of Business Development

Contiamo

Contiamo tries to be the fastest way from data to results. They deliver production-ready data science solutions in days, tailored to customers’ business requirements. With Contiamo’s cutting-edge data virtualization platform, data integration and organization become seamless. This provides the springboard for Contiamo’s industry-leading solutions team to rapidly produce data science solutions to your business challenges. With vast experience in leading consultancies, they become a business partner in testing, iterating on and deploying data science, machine learning and A.I. solutions. Check out their Website

Stefan Versteeg

Sales Director

Crunchr

Crunchr’s mission is to help companies make better workforce decisions using data, analytics and expertise. They provide an enterprise cloud solution (for people analytics and workforce planning) to get the most out of your data to optimize business performance and increase employee experience. It combines and connects workforce data from your HR systems and translates this into relevant insights with the right context. The solution is designed for (strategic) workforce management and complies with strict (European) data protection laws. They believe that just technology is not enough to embrace workforce analytics, but that it needs to go hand-in-hand with a capability building program to add ‘digital’ to the culture. Check out their Website

Markus Trostel

Senior Inside Sales Representative

Dedrone

Dedrone has developed the first automated drone security platform. The key to DroneTracker’s success is its au- tomatic classification, alerting, evidence recording, and triggering of mitigation strategy. Their customers rely on their 24/7 airspace surveillance, which provides highly efficient protection against aerial threats, valuable information about drone activity (including frequency, flight paths, drone models), and integrates individual countermeasures. The power of the solution is in its combination of hardware sensors and machine learning software – the only way to stay ahead of threats that are evolving, where there are new manufacturers and drone types every day. Check out their Website

Martin Naumann

CEO

drag&bot

drag&bot, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institut (IPA) in Stuttgart, develops a software for the programming of industrial robots, which works independently of the brand of the robot. It is an intuitive web-based software for easy setup, programming and operation of industrial robots. The key feature is the graphical user interface, which offers a fast and flexible way of building programs by dragging and dropping the function blocks in the execution flow. The target user group are technicians, engineers and production workers rather than experts. It is a cloud-based platform, supporting all major robot brands and models as well as all relevant HW/SW extensions. It allows customers to extend the software according to their specific needs. Check out their Website

Jerome Flint

VP International Markets

e-bot7

e-bot7 brings practical applications of Deep Learning and A.I. to customer service and helps companies achieve greater customer service efficiency. This reduces average handling time up to 80% and increasingly automates re- sponses and processes. They can integrate a pilot on any channel the company prefers and use their platform in order to track satisfaction, automation rates and more. Their solution is proprietary which allows e-bot7 to offer a highly accurate NLP solution that is secure and flexible to help customers solve problems. Check out their Website

Aviv Frenkel

CEO & Co-Founder

Enroute

Enroute develops a personalized, location-based com- merce platform linked to mobility apps like Uber, Lyft, etc. and mass transit services that allow passengers to ride for FREE as they shop, interact and collect items from locations close to their destination. Check out their Website

Avi Rosenfeld

EVP Global Sales

Eyesight

Eyesight offers the most advanced in-cabin sensing solutions that utilize Computer Vision and AI to enhance the driving experience. The solutions enhance safety by: monitoring the driver to detect drowsy and distracted driving, reducing the driver’s cognitive load with touch-free infotainment control, detecting cabin occupancy for optimizing safety systems according to the passenger’s present, and personalizing thein-cabin experience. Check out their Website

Berk Birand

CEO

Fero Labs

Fero is an industrial machine learning software compa- ny that is powering the next wave of industrial process improvement. They provide actionable and interpretable machine learning through their easy-to-use software. Fero enables quality engineers, continuous improvement managers, operators, and data scientists to reduce raw material consumption, increase efficiency, minimize emissions, and understand the hidden relationships that lead to these inefficiencies. Their engagements span automotive, chemicals, steel, and energy sectors. Check out their Website

Mathieu Noirot-Cosson

Key Account Manager

Flyability

To fly indoor, in complex and confined spaces and in con- tact with people a drone must be able to provide the highest level of reliability and notably to ensure that the risk of crash is discarded. By allowing drones to fly safely inside buildings and in contact with people, Flyability enables new interactions and services with UAVs and solve the two most critical issues of one of the fastest growing industries: collision and injury risks. They offer a safer, cheaper, and faster alternative to the professional in need for visual information of dangerous, difficult to access or expensive to access places. Check out their Website

Michael Hiebinger

Account Executive

Franka Emika

Franka Emika’s vision is to make robots a commodity by putting the human at the center of robot design. This paradigm allows to seamlessly connect efficency, digitalization and intelligent automation in order to achive the optimal user experience. To them, the ideal robot of the future is a tool which can be used by anybody and which supports humans in carrying out unpleasant or even dangerous tasks. Panda is the first system of entirely new generation of tools, which are developed as research robots, as colleagues in factories, and ultimately, as assistants in daily life for elderly or sick people. Check out their Website

Eric Wenig

Head of Sales

KINEXON Industries

The real-time location solution precisely tracks the position, motion and status of people and objects. Core of the system is a scalable sensor network technology and a real-time analytics and processing edge platform (RIoT). The sensor network consists of small sensors that track the 3D position with <30cm accuracy. Possible use cases are: seamless asset tracking, steering of AGV, forklift tracking, automation of manual process steps, geofencing and many more. In contrast to existing technologies such as RFID, the position, status and ID of objects can be recorded anywhere and at any time with centimeter accuracy. This enables complete transparency for process optimization and flexible control of assets, orders and transports in connection with higher-level ERP, WMS or control systems. Check out their Website

Stefan Jenzowsky

CEO & Co-Founder

Kopernikus

Kopernikus Automotive builds the technology stack to enable production passenger cars to be driven by A.I. self-driving car software. The A.I. Middleware allows Kopernikus to increase the efficiency of OEM facilities by A.I. in production, loading, and repair facilities and allows A.I. software developers to deploy to today’s automobiles. They increase the efficiency of OEM facilities by driving cars by A.I.. Thus, they replace thousands of employees driving around cars at production, loading, repair facilities. Check out their Website

Karina Buschsieweke

Managing Director

Lana Labs

LANA Process Mining enables its customers to leverage the full saving potential of their processes and the opportunities of the Internet of Things. With the possibility to collect and connect data along value chains, digital traces of processes can be leveraged in order to automatically uncover potential for savings, performance improvements or compliance risks. LANA Process Mining puts an end to inefficient manual process analyses and brings transparency to every process, by using process data of IT Systems (ERP, MES..), to visualize actual process execution and match it with an ideal state. Automated tar- get-actual analyses and machine learning-powered root cause analyses of process deviations are executed to enable fast and fact-based decision-making for improvement measures. Check out their Website

Brent Schwarz

Head of Business Development

Luminartech

Luminar is an autonomous vehicle sensor company with a vision to power every autonomous vehicle with the first LiDAR capable of making them both safe and ubiquitous. Luminar built its LiDAR from the chip level up, delivering 50x better resolution and 10x longer range than the most advanced LiDARs available today. Luminar’s sensor is the core of a platform that enables safe autonomous vehicles. Luminar has four strategic partners, including Toyota Research Institute and Volvo. Check out their Website

Benjamin Pieck

Co-Founder

matching box

MATCHINGBOX is an HR-Innovation that is focused on a culture-based recruiting approach. Through an award-winning matching algorithm, corporates can attract and retain talents with a digital mindset to strengthen their employer branding in a sustainable and authentic way. Check out their Website

Jens Heinrich

Co-Founder & CEO

NAiSE

NAiSE was founded with the vision to equip the factory of the future with maximum transparency and flexibility. They offer a wholistic solution for the global navigation and collective coordination of all intralogistical participants: From vehicles to humans as well as goods and mobile robots – NAiSE enables simultaneous collaboration on the same floor. This is delivered by a coherent sensor- and software-system, which enables the autonomous navigation of mobile robots and increases the security of people through global localization. The NAiSE-system was developed for the Industry from day 1 and therefore offers a highly streamlined and cost-effective solution for all intralogistical use cases - one holistic standard for localization, navigation, analytics and communication. Check out their Website

Jiri Cermak

Technology Evangelist

Neuron Soundware

Neuron soundware leads the field in emulating and scaling human intuition about machine sounds through IoT and AI. By recording acoustic emissions via proprietary sensors and IoT devices, and by subsequent machine learning-based evaluation, defects and conditions are detected with accuracy matching and surpassing that of human operators and engineers. Neuron soundware’s technology brings speed, scale, and cost savings to predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, as well as to production quality control. It is suitable for machinery and mechanical systems in manufacturing, oil & gas, mining, energy, railway, and many other industries. Check out their Website

Kai Saksela

CEO

Noiseless Acoustics

NL Camera is a portable ultrasonic camera that literally makes sound visible. NL Sense provides continuous monitoring for customer equipment. Their products transform sound into actionable data for customers. With the NL Camera, industry customers can save money through compressed air leakage detection. With the NL Sense, Noiseless Acoustics provide smart analytics and continuous monitoring of various equipment using their acoustic fingerprint technology, which helps customers avoid costly downtime. Check out their Website

Dr. Matthias Nieser

Co-Founder & CEO & Technical Lead

QuadCover

QuadCover offers a software solution to automate pre-processing steps within FEM simulation. The innovative algorithms, that pursue a completely new approach of optimizing geometries, are able to quadrangulate surfaces globally and almost automatically with minimum user interaction. The process takes the curvature as a baseline and optimizes the quad or quad-dominant meshes to CAE restrictions, like element uniformity and curvature alignment. The resulting meshes are highly usable for FEM simulations as well as design activities and are able to automate and speed up the FEM pre-processing steps. Check out their Website

Roadster

Roadster provides consumer-driven Omnichannel Commerce Solutions for today’s modern dealership. With Roadster’s proprietary technology platform, dealerships can provide hassle-free car buying in-store, online or on the go. From inventory merchandising, to financing/leasing, incentives, trade-ins, service plans and accessories - Express Storefront delivers near penny perfect deals in a beautifully designed interface that customers and employees will love. Dealerships can increase their CSI scores, while significantly reducing dealership sales costs. Check out their Website

Sven Zuschlag

CEO

SmapOne

smapOne allows companies an easy start into digital transformation. The company with headquarters in Hanover and a branch in Dresden offers a simple and quick way to optimize business processes through self-tailored business apps and thus to save time and money at the end of the day. With the help of smapOne employees are able to create a business app on all major operating systems (Windows, IOS oder Android) within 30 minutes – either independently or consulted by smapOne digitalization experts. Check out their Website

TEND

TEND is an exciting new way to access, own, experience and invest in valuable assets. Whether your interest or aspiration is for art, wine, watches, music, classic cars, racehorses. They let you get involved smartly, enabling hassle-free ownership combined with real-life experiences. They give you access to a curated collection of valuable assets that, until now, have been beyond the reach of most of us. The thing about TEND is that even by owning just a piece of an asset, you get a multitude of benefits. Get memorable real-life experiences, access to world-class experts and privileged insights, a potential financial return, a sense of connection and sharing with like-minded co-owners, friends and family. Check out their Website

Martijn Joris

CEO

Twikit

The Twikbot cloud platform is an end-to-end solution con- necting the customer experience — such as the 3D interactive model of a product in a mobile browser — to digital manufacturing like 3D printing, lasercutting and CNC milling to create highly individualized products at scale. The software platform integrates seamlessly within your existing ecosystem: web platform, e-commerce, in-store kiosk, order management and CMS system, ERP, manufacturing processes and more. Check out their Website

Harald Wuest

CEO

Visometry

Visometry is a Fraunhofer spin-off founded in 2017, based in Darmstadt (Germany). They create Augmented Reality core technologies, develop custom solutions and support customers integrating AR and computer vision into their business. They are changing AR from the bottom up with Machine Vision & AR tracking at industrial scale. Their VisionLib tracking engine enables precise (multi-)object tracking in an automated workflow from CAD to AR, for a variety of high class AR applications along the entire value chain, from prototyping, over production to sales, maintenance and training. Check out their Website

Christian Flechl

Managing Director

Volterio

Volterio developes and industrializes the world’s leading automatic, conductive charging solution for electric vehicles. The system consists of the charging robot on the floor as well as the very compact vehicle unit, which is integrated in the car’s underbody. Guided by an ultrasound based positioning system, the charging robot automatically connects to the vehicle unit within a wide range of parking tolerance of the electic vehicle. Among their clients are already the world’s leading premium OEMs. Check out their Website

Amir Adamov

CEO

White Raven

White Raven is an AI-based visual positioning software company. Their technology recognizes buildings, landmarks, and other objects in the physical world and can infer a moving camera’s location, direction and what it’s looking at. This is critical for autonomous cars’ navigation in areas where GPS connectivity is not guaranteed. It enables precise, fast and frictionless navigation to highly specific locations - e.g. a particular door, as opposed to an entire building, and is the basis for augmented reality experiences for drivers and passengers. The visual positioning system which has been developed for the last four years uses deep neural networks (DNNs) and can recognize the urban environment, as well as the user’s accurate location. Check out their Website

Timothée Boitouzet

CEO

WOODOO

WOODOO bridges synthetic biology and organic chemistry to design patented, groundbreaking new materials. Reinventing life onboard and passenger experience, WOODOO transforms native wood into a tactile, translucent HMI interface for enabling connected car interiors. Check out their Website

Steele Jesse

Director of Communication and Marketing

Xain

XAIN, the eXpandable Artificial Intelligence Network, is a Berlin-based tech company specializing in A.I., Cybersecurity and Distributed Systems. They combine academic research with industry experience to propose and develop unique solutions around enterprise data, resource and knowledge sharing challenges. These solutions empower users to provide secure, on-point access to their own sensitive data and to delegate access to their resources in a granular way. XAIN’s solution brings user-centric dis- tributed access control closer to devices, datasets, and machines. Its expressed intent is to give owners of such resources genuine control over their use, including the ability to exchange and delegate access rights. Check out their Website

Schedule

In case you are curious to find out when everything takes place. This will very likely get updated in the upcoming days – so be sure to take a glimpse on it once in a while.

12:30 — 14:00

Networking: Get to know the people attending todays event

Innovation Walk

14:00 — 14:30

keynote

Speaker

Winfried Kretschmann
Minister President, State of Baden-Württemberg
Saeed Amidi
CEO & Founder, Plug and Play Tech Center
Sascha Karimpour
Managing Partner, Plug & Play Germany GmbH

Host

Patrice Bouédibéla
Presenter | Host

14:30 — 15:05

keynote

Speaker

Tim Smith
Global Auto & Mobility Director, ustwo fampany ltd

A USER–CENTRED DESIGN APPROACH TO DRIVERLESS CARS
What will we want from driverless cars of the future? What are our human needs for the technology? We need to understand the answers to these questions so that we can design the technology in a way that can be adopted by all - not the fortunate few. Following the release of ustwo Auto’s second book, Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going?, Tim‘s talk draws on some of the key insights from the research and user testing that the book is built around and shows off some real world user–centred designs for driverless cars.

15:05 — 15:20

talk

Introducing new STARTUP AUTOBAHN Partners, announced by David Neef, Partnership Director, Plug & Play Germany

FUTURE OF MOBILITY Stage

15:30 — 15:55

talk

Speaker

Christoph Stadeler
Director Automotive, EMEA Facebook
Vitaly Ponomarev
CEO, Wayray
Marcus Kühne
Chief Innovation Officer, holoride
Christina Ibrom
Head of UX/UI Advanced Engineering, Daimler

Host

Patrice Bouédibéla
Presenter | Host

FUTURE OF MOBILITY

Stage

FUTURE OF PRODUCTION Stage

15:30 — 15:55

talk

Speaker

Simon Schumacher
Project Manager Future Work Lab, Fraunhofer IPA
Fatmir Kqiku
Head of Robotics and Automation Consulting, DXC North and Central Europe
Michael Hiebinger
Account Executive, Franka Emika

Host

Stephan Dörner
Editor-in-Chief, t3n

FUTURE OF PRODUCTION

Stage

FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE Stage

15:30 — 15:55

talk

Speaker

Dr. Gisela Linge
Director Corporate Strategy, Webasto
Wolfgang Herbst
Regional CTO for North and Central Europe, DXC Technology
Charles Vaillant
CTO, MANN + HUMMEL
Jürgen Winterholler
CDO, Rolls Royce Power Systems
Zheng Guo (Sam)
CEO of Lab1886 China, Daimler

FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE

Stage

INNOVATION WALK

15:30 — 15:50

innovation walk

As additional format we organizing Innovation Walks. These are guided tours for participants of the ExpoDay giving insights into a specific topic, beyond the topics of the three pitching stages. The duration of each tour will be about 15-20 minutes.

Disruptor