Thousands of pneumatic clamping systems are used on production lines in the automotive industry. For example, they hold the individual parts in place during welding in car body shell construction. Software from Festo with artificial intelligence from Resolto determines whether the clamps are still working properly or should be replaced as part of predictive maintenance. To do this, it uses only the signals from the valves and the end positions of the drives, which are already present. This avoids expensive downtimes.

This AI solution from Festo impressed the competition jury and also Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour and Housing in Baden-Württemberg, who for the first time presented awards to business-related research institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises and large companies from Baden-Württemberg as "AI Champions Baden-Württemberg" for their outstanding solutions in the field of AI. Dr. Thilo Streichert, Head of Embedded Software Development, and Dr. Dominic Kraus, Product Management and Business Development, accepted the award on behalf of the winners via live stream.

Festo Board Member for Product and Technology Management Dr. Frank Melzer also joined the event from his vacation: "Festo aspires to be an innovation leader and therefore the preferred automation partner for its customers worldwide. As artificial intelligence is the key technology of the future, our focus is on the further development of decentralized, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence. We acquired the AI specialist Resolto back in 2018 and have been steadily driving forward the topics of analytics and artificial intelligence. AI will have a huge impact on our product portfolio, for example by enabling AI algorithms to be integrated both in the cloud and directly into Festo components. I am therefore very pleased and particularly proud of this award and that we were able to convince the jury with our AI solution."