Siemens Excellence Award 2020: IO-Link project wins
Siemens has honored a young researcher from the Bern University of Applied Sciences with the national Siemens Excellence Award. The prize, worth 10,000 Swiss francs, goes to Pascal Frei. With his work "IO-Link Master Shield/Hat for Arduino and Raspberry Pi", the graduating student with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology convinced the expert jury and prevailed against four other nominated teams.
Until now, these sensor values have been transmitted in analog form, usually via voltage or current. With the IO-Link protocol, the data is already digitized by the sensor and then transmitted via a bidirectional serial communication line, i.e. data transmission in both directions from point to point, to a sensor node, a master module.
In order to be able to use IO-Link in the school environment, the young researcher from Wasen in Emmental, with the support of industry partner Balluff AG, developed a sensor node that has four connections and can be used for both Arduino and Raspberry Pi. To this end, he has developed a software library so that the IO-Link interface can be implemented more easily.
The software library can be used on the microcontroller board Arduino, as well as on the minicomputer Raspberry Pi. In order to test this solution, a demonstrator in the form of a signal lamp was developed. This project illustrates in an exciting way the cooperation between software and hardware, which is particularly important in the electrical engineering course.
With this practical and future-oriented project, the prize winner was not only able to convince the jury - in the meantime, several companies and universities of applied sciences have expressed interest in the product and the production of a mini-series has even been commissioned. For Matthias Rebellius, CEO of Siemens Switzerland, the promotion of young talent takes an important position:
"With the Excellence Award, we want to motivate young people to work on scientific topics that can be implemented in practice." In addition to scientific achievement, the degree of innovation, social relevance and practical feasibility of the work are the main criteria in the evaluation of the entries. The Excellence Award is part of the "Generation21" education program, with which Siemens seeks dialogue with young people and promotes young talent in the fields of science and technology. "With this commitment, we accompany young people in their development and education and support them in seizing their future opportunities," says Matthias Rebellius.
