Each year, Siemens presents the Inventors of the Year award to outstanding inventors in six categories: Newcomers, Open Innovation, Outstanding Invention, Lifetime Achievement, Design and User Experience and the recently added PhD Award. In addition to helping explain artificial intelligence (AI), the prize-winning inventions also make power grids more sustainable, railcar axles more stable and charging stations for electric vehicles more universal. The 2023 award will be presented today to twelve Inventors of the Year from the U.S., the UK, China, India, Kazakhstan and Germany.
“Our innovations are our strength and the best way to predict the future of Siemens,” said Peter Körte, chief technology officer at Siemens. “We firmly believe that AI has the potential to revolutionize our work and the way we manufacture products. We already play a leading role in generating industrial artificial intelligence. The AI we create is responsible, comprehensible and trustworthy.”
From artificial intelligence to the world’s smartest university campus
The inventions being honored, for example, help explain artificial intelligence. Because processes that use machine learning often seem like a black box: They supply answers to questions, but don’t explain how they obtained their results. But in many applications it’s important for people to understand how a conclusion was reached. Another award honored the use of AI in configuring complex factory automation solutions. Swathi Shyam Sunder developed an AI system which helps derive context-aware recommendations from historical data on product configurations and from facts relating to products and components.
This system makes the design process easier and faster. Siemens is already using this development in its factory automation business. The University of Birmingham plans to build the world’s smartest university campus. It’s one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom, with around 36,000 students and 8,500 employees. Research, teaching and learning take place in more than 200 buildings, covering a range of historic and modern spaces.
The university employs a combination of sensor technology, simulation and artificial intelligence to research ways to use buildings and individual spaces, then derives optimization approaches from the results. The 12 award-winning inventors are part of a strong team: People working at Siemens came up with 5,383 inventions in fiscal 2023, which is 16% more than in fiscal 2022 and amounts to around 24 inventions per workday. Siemens holds a total of more than 46,500 patent grants worldwide. Since the European Unitary Patent was launched in June 2023, the European Patent Office has received over 12,000 applications for this type of patent – the majority of which came from Siemens.
The company invested approximately €6.2 billion in research and development, an increase of nearly 11% year-over-year. More than 51,000 people work in research and development at Siemens.
About Siemens
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a leading technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, transport and healthcare. From more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. Siemens also owns a majority stake in the publicly listed company Siemens Healthineers, a globally leading medical technology provider shaping the future of healthcare.
