Siemens is looking for solutions for, but not limited to, the intelligent behavior of manufacturing plants, automating already existing smart home systems, making smart grids more efficient, etc.

Use Case: How can we get IoT to automate automation further? How can we add value to entire value chains - from smart grids to smart homes and self-acting conveyor belts? The future of automation lies in Industrial Internet of Things, autonomous systems and robotics. This category is for ideas that facilitate integrated automation leading to intelligent behavior of products, plants, and cloud-based operating systems.

Siemens is expecting solutions that will help them to safeguard critical infrastructure, protect sensitive information, and assure business continuity among others.

Use Case: Everything and everyone is online—including data and hackers—which is why our customers need to completely trust Siemens digital technologies and solutions to embrace digital transformation. Under this category, participants must develop prototypes that are related to cyber security/cryptography to enhance the security of Siemens’s systems, products, and digital services.

The intelligent networking of systems and components or the Internet of Things (IoT) is an important driver of digitalization. This category is for solutions that use edge devices, advanced communication, and technologies and network architecture to link various information sources, decentralize data monitoring and management for smarter industries, mobility/traffic, buildings, and energy management. Use cases for prototype building consideration:

Siemens is looking for smarter solutions in the process automation, manufacturing, and the energy sector. The goal is to integrate systems and solutions into new IoT structures and deliver the greatest benefits for customers by linking various information sources. Having set the market standards with products such as real-time ethernet (Profinet), Siemens continues to explore future communication technologies and network architecture.

• Connecting non-smart devices to the IoT system.
• Wireless connectivity from Edge to Cloud using Zigbee etc.
• Low energy based connectivity using BLE/Beacons etc.
• Industry 4.0 enabled gateways
• Industry standard communication protocol converter gateways
• Indoor asset tracking without using GPS

You are expected to create blockchain-secured solutions for peer-to-peer financial and legal transactions on decentralized databases across corporate boundaries, distributed audit trails, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts.

Got ideas for blockchain applications? Take on the challenge and develop solutions for transparent digital protocols for business transactions/digital services or applications that enable real-time energy trading in complex markets. Use blockchain to establish peer-to-peer communication between devices for automated software upgrades, bug fixes, and create blockchain-enabled data structures to change the way Siemens records, transfers, and stores data on the cloud. Dive into the many possibilities and get disruptive!Use cases shared for prototype building consideration:

• Supply chain Streamlining
• Product/Device lifecycle management
• Inter-organizational data management
• Patient Medical record management
• Implementing Digital identity for Assets
• Transparency in Mining industry
• Banking

Bring on the algorithms and tap into the enormous potential of data analytics and artificial intelligence. Make Siemens’ products come alive and make operations more efficient with augmented reality. This category is for solutions that use AR, advanced AI-based, deep-learning techniques, and programming to create highly scalable and reliable self-learning machines, devices, and networking systems for Energy, Industrial Automation and Building Technologies applications.

Siemens is looking for solutions towards newer, smarter medical technologies, smarter management and services for operators of power plants, integrating Siemens’ customers' manufacturing processes into digital platforms that enable them to boost efficiency through networked systems and self-learning machines.

• Natural Language processing
• Recommendation engines
• Customer support engines
• Sentiment analysis in social media
• Dynamic pricing
• Customized campaign

How can we simplify the job of product-commissioning engineers with end-to-end product simulation? How can we gather discrete data from field devices and Production/Manufacturing/Operating units to create and calibrate virtual models for real-time feedback and multi-physics simulation? How can we make Siemens’ products come alive and make operations more efficient with augmented reality? This is a category for solutions that blurs the lines between physical products/systems and their software models a.k.a digital twins.

Use Case: Siemens is looking for smarter solutions to fully close the loop from design to production and the performance of products and systems so that information from the operation helps to optimize the initial design process. Your solutions may address systems to monitor their own conditions and simulate future behavior in real-time, buildings can be planned more efficiently, and product design cycles to be shortened.

e-Mobility (electric cars/wagons/bikes) and related hot topics such as fast charging, supercapacitors, shared transport services etc., have great potential in the future. This can be seen in the mass adoption of e-vehicles and the race by companies to develop self-driving vehicles and autonomous transport systems. Does your idea facilitate these transformations? Does your idea offer integrated, sustainable transportation solutions to optimize existing infrastructure with high-tech hardware and smart-management systems? If yes, this category is perfect for you.

Use Case: Siemens is looking for integrated, sustainable transportation solutions that optimize existing infrastructures with high-tech hardware and smart-management systems such as its Connected (e)Mobility.