Press

On February 27, 2026, Fraunhofer IDMT's 3D audio technology was launched at an exclusive premiere event in Erfurt. It's now available in all Mercedes-Benz vehicles with the latest MBUX infotainment system. This technology creates an impressive three-dimensional sound experience, allowing even conventional stereo content to be enjoyed in a new way. The first vehicles that will benefit from this technology will be the new Mercedes-Benz CLA, GLC, GLB, and S-Class models, followed by other model series.

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The future car should be able to hear: Future vehicles will have high demands on computing power due to the growing amount of data generated by digital vehicle components. At the same time, acoustic exterior sensors are a central component for automated driving.

That is why Fraunhofer IDMT-HSA is researching the integration of acoustic sensor technology in the KI4BoardNet project with The Hearing Car. The Oldenburg branch has now equipped research vehicles with new microphones and specially developed measurement technology. To test both, the team traveled to a test site in Sweden in spring together with project partner CARIAD SE.

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Researchers from Jena have developed a cost-effective yet powerful infrared camera particularly suited for use in autonomous vehicles. The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF is presenting the innovative infrared camera at the International Suppliers Fair (IZB) in Wolfsburg.

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Loud or unpleasant driving noises can impair the enjoyment of music in the car. Some sound systems therefore dynamically adjust the volume and bass. However, individual sound preferences are not taken into account. A study from Fraunhofer IDMT in Oldenburg has now investigated the influence of background noise on the personal sound experience while driving – and shows how an adjustment of individual sound preferences once could improve the sound in the vehicle (and beyond). 

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A new joint study by Fraunhofer ISI and Amazon provides critical insights as to the optimal number and location of public fast-charging stations required to enable the widespread electrification of long-haul trucking in Europe. Using traffic flow estimates for 2030, the study built on Amazon’s open-source CHALET tool to analyse 20,000 potential public truck charging locations along the major European highways and a large data set of 1.6 million truck trip combinations. The results suggest that just 1,000 charging stations equipped with Megawatt Charging System (MCS) outlets could enable about 91% of expected long-haul trucking traffic.

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A new Fraunhofer ISI study analysed future cost developments for price-setting components of zero-emission trucks from more than 200 sources. The study findings show that zero-emission trucks will benefit from rapidly falling costs of batteries and fuel cells, which will enable their fast market diffusion and help to achieve national and international climate policy targets. With battery-electric trucks as currently most promising and cost-effective zero-emission technology for most use cases, industry and policy must prepare with respect to their manufacturing, comprehensive charging infrastructure, electricity grid expansion, and regulation.

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The Fraunhofer Austria position paper “Shared Logistics” analyzes the current challenges facing the logistics industry, such as climate neutrality, transparency in supply chains and labor shortages. The researchers emphasize that the shared use of physical resources and data is necessary to increase efficiency and sustainability.

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Lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles lose their charging capacity during the use. Therefore, they are no longer suitable for vehicle operation from a ca-pacity loss of 20 percent, as the range and fast-charging capability are reduced. However, the remaining capacity of 80 percent is sufficient for a stationary storage application. In the CIRCULUS research project, several Lithium-ion trac-tion batteries already in use are being converted into a stationary storage sys-tem. The innovative lightweight design of the overall system ensures that the system can be dismantled according to type. This minimizes the sorting effort, resulting in high-quality material flows and thus implementing a functional and sustainable circular economy.

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In the MobilKULT project, Fraunhofer ISI is exploring how individual mobility habits, experiences with infrastructure, attitudes toward different modes of transport and opinions about policy measures are changing. Every six months, the research team conducts a representative survey. In the last two rounds, the focus was on the Deutschland-Ticket (a subscription ticket for local public transport across Germany) – which, according to the study, has the potential to shift mobility toward more sustainability.

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In the “HoLa” project, a total of eight high-performance charging points for trucks using the Megawatt Charging System (MCS) are being installed at five locations along the A2 between Berlin and the Ruhr region and used in real logistics operations. Recommendations for action have been derived from the research results available to date that contain important findings for a nationwide expansion of charging infrastructure. 

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The car of the future must be able to hear, for example, the siren of an approaching emergency vehicle. That is why the experts at Fraunhofer IDMT in Oldenburg are working on The Hearing Car®. From 7 to 9 March, they will present their latest developments for smart acoustic sensor technology on and in vehicles on their stand and in live demonstrations with their own test vehicle at the DAGA 2023 trade exhibition in Hamburg. They will also showcase solutions for personalised sound in the car as well as a monitoring system to document the engaging of plug connections during production.

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Optics that do not fog up and almost do not reflect - this will be possible in the future due to a new optical coating system developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF. The technology is expected to help improve the performance of lidar systems and cameras in, for example, autonomous driving cars. The research team has now presented the new process in a paper published in the journal "Applied Optics".

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Many accidents at sea are due to errors in communication between seafarers. An automatic voice monitoring system for the ship’s bridge will ensure greater safety. With the speech recognition system and support from Fraunhofer IDMT in Oldenburg, Germany, ELNAV, a start-up company based in Split, Croatia, is developing what it calls a »Helm Order Monitor«.

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Constructing or planning complex urban environments requires a solid data basis. But the available planning data is often obsolete and incomplete. This is why Fraunhofer IPM and incontext.technology GmbH have joined forces to develop a process for creating a digital twin of urban environments quickly and with deep granularity. The idea behind the MuSiS research project is that measurement systems installed on taxis, busses and streetcars record their environment while the vehicles drive along their usual route, constantly collecting up-to-date data.

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Researchers at Fraunhofer IDMT have developed a 3D audio technology based on audio objects which, as a central audio platform in the vehicle, allows the creation of interactive and immersive audio content and thus creates completely new application scenarios for the use of audio in vehicles. In the technical article for audioXpress magazine, our acoustics expert Christoph Sladeczek describes a new workflow that enables the rendering of audio objects in serial vehicles on resource-limited hardware.

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Everyone hears differently – this applies inside a vehicle too. That is why Fraunhofer IDMT in Oldenburg has developed a technological concept for fast and individual sound adaptation, which has been integrated into the multimedia system of vehicles from the Mercedes-Benz Group AG. At the heart of the development is an algorithm that easily adjusts the sound of music according to passengers’ wishes. Once set, the sound is optimally adapted to listening preferences.

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Modern vehicles have a large number of electronic systems that are networked with each other. Since these systems are at risk from cyber attacks, Fraunhofer IPMS developed a CANsec IP core that makes vehicle systems more secure. The IP core is already being evaluated in a demonstration by partner Renesas Electronics Corporation, a leading semiconductor company that delivers embedded processors together with analog and power products. At the Embedded World trade show from June 21-23, both Fraunhofer IPMS and Renesas will present the CAN-SEC IP-Core for the first time.

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