Back in March, I shared the following LinkedIn post that revealed a partnership between BrainChip and fortiss, the Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems - as well as another one between fortiss and our competitor Innatera.
Which begs the question, by the way, why fortiss is still missing in the Partners section on our website?
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 We were thrilled to meet our partners BrainChip and Innatera at the embedded world Exhibition&Conference in Nuremberg! It was an exciting opportunity to discuss the latest advancements in Neuromorphic Computing and explore how we can push the boundaries of...
www.linkedin.com
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Yesterday, I spotted an interesting job vacancy placed by fortiss.
They are looking for someone who would like to write a Master’s thesis on the topic of “Event-based Neuromorphic for AR and Space”:
“You will be integrated in a small team of neuromorphic computing researchers at fortiss. You will be working on one of our neuromorphic algorithms, related with ongoing projects EMMANÜELA and CORINNE, as well as an upcoming ESA project about satellite communication.”
BACHELOR / MASTER THESIS (all) , Neuromorphic Computing in Hamburg
recruitment.fortiss.org
Who are we?
fortiss is the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems and services with headquarters in Munich. The institute currently employs around 120 employees, who collaborate on research, development and transfer projects with universities and technology companies in Bavaria, Germany and Europe.
Research is focused on state of the art methods, techniques and tools of software development, systems & service engineering and their application to reliable, secure cyber-physical systems, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). fortiss has the legal structure of a non-profit limited liability company (GmbH). Its shareholders are the Free State of Bavaria (as majority shareholder) and the Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research.
www.fortiss.org
In the Neuromorphic Computing department, we are searching for
Master Students (M/F/D)
Your topic:
You will be integrated in a small team of neuromorphic computing researchers at fortiss. You will be working on one of our neuromorphic algorithms, related with ongoing projects EMMANÜELA and CORINNE, as well as an upcoming ESA project about satellite communication:
- a body motion recognition sensor with an event-based camera and online few-shots learning on neuromorphic hardware mounted on 3D AR-goggles
- third person action recognition, ego gesture recognition, tennis dataset, ego motion compensation
- continual learning SNN based algorithms for action classification on the fly and automatic labeling for robotic arm control (welding application)
- improvement of class separation in continual learning algorithm, integration with robotic arm
- fault detection, isolation and recovery on neuromorphic hardware for satellite communications
- spiking fault detection neural network, fault prediction, fault classification, hardware implementation on neuromorphic chip
- efficient time encoding on neuromorphic hardware
- spike encoding optimization, trainable encodings, latency reduction
- efficient Lidar neuromorphic processing for automated driving
A publication, in a scientific journal or conference, as a co-author of your supervisor, is most likely expected at the end of your mission.
Your profile:
- Excellent bachelor degree in electronics engineering, computer science or similar topic
- Excellent track record in your current masters
- Fluency in software development (Python for example)
- Interest or experience in machine vision, event-based cameras, sensors
- Residency in Munich or close surroundings
Our offer:
- Work in partnership with leading companies in AI
- Offices in central Munich (Nordfriedhof) in very high and modern premises with 360° view on Munich
- Nice working atmosphere in a small team
Did we catch your interest?
Please submit your application with a cover letter, a detailed CV, and a current transcript of records.
Job-ID: NC-MS-2025-1
Contact: Dr. Axel von Arnim
- Ralf Kohlenhuber
- Human Resources Administrator
We know for sure that the fortiss researchers are using Loihi for their ongoing CORINNE project (project duration: 1 April 2024 - 31 March 2026):
The EMMANÜELA project, which investigates the potential of neuromorphic computing for AR/VR applications, started on 1 November 2024 and will run until 31 October 2026. The project webpage doesn’t specify what neuromorphic hardware is being used.
The research projects at fortiss Institut contribute to the sustainable development of research and economy. All projects are based on the basic competence "software-intensive systems and services".
www.fortiss.org
Hard to say whether we could be involved here. If we are, likely not from the outset, as our partnership with fortiss was only revealed in mid-March, when Axel von Arnim and Jules Lecomte met up with the BrainChip and Innatera teams at Embedded World “to discuss the latest advancements in Neuromorphic Computing and
explore how we can push the boundaries of AI at the edge.” Sounds to me as if this exploration was only getting started at the time.
The fortiss LinkedIn post then lists some key takeaways from the discussion, which in BrainChip’s case, revolved around Akida 2.0 and TENNs, and concludes: “
Together we strengthened our collaboration plans. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to drive neuromorphic innovation forward!
”
The bolded sentence again suggests that up to then (3.5 months ago), no formal collaboration had taken place, which makes it rather unlikely that we are involved in the EMMANÜELA project, which - in addition - would have been planned well in advance in order to get the awarded funding from the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy.
But then there is this passage towards the end of the project webpage, where it says “fortiss contributes directly to the generation of event-based datasets for action recognition in AR/VR
and researches neuromorphic algorithms for this purpose.
These are implemented and benchmarked on neuromorphic hardware. In addition, fortiss is involved in building and testing the prototype.”
Does the word “benchmarked” here refer to the algorithms being benchmarked against each other on the same hardware or different kinds of neuromorphic hardware being benchmarked against each other?
Although the word “continue” in the LinkedIn post’s last sentence (“Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to drive neuromorphic innovation forward!”) could be interpreted at hinting at an already ongoing collaboration, it might just be a non-native speaker’s awkward way of expressing that all three entities in their own right were already driving neuromorphic innovation forward and will continue to do so - both BrainChip and Innatera now also in tandem with fortiss. Neither does the “more” in “more updates” IMO imply a stealth mode partnership history, as an “update” by definition requires a preceding post. So logically speaking, the above post cannot have been an update itself, which could theoretically be followed by “more updates”.
I suppose “Stay tuned for updates” would have been the correct wording either way.
The mention of
an upcoming ESA project about satellite communication, on the other hand, sounds very intriguing, unless “one of our neuromorphic algorithms” were to relate to
all three projects (but if so, why the comma after CORINNE?) and then possibly rules us out, in case this signifies it must then refer to a leaky-integrate-and-fire neuron model that Loihi uses (since we know CORINNE uses Loihi). I am out of my depth here, though.
Or is the either way grammatically incomplete sentence rather missing an [on] than a [with/to], and hence the work on the ESA satellite project is entirely separate from the neuromorphic algorithm related to the other two projects?
“You will be working on one of our neuromorphic algorithms, related with ongoing projects EMMANÜELA and CORINNE, as well as [on] an upcoming ESA project about satellite communication.”
Unfortunately there is no German version of the job description to compare.
Interestingly, the job ad says the applicant can look forward to working “in company with leading compan
ies in AI”, which sounds as if both Intel (for CORINNE) and at least one other company are involved.
Which may or may not be BrainChip.
Yes, Laurent Hili is very impressed by Akida, but he and his fellow researchers at ESA may very well still like to test Innatera’s offerings for space applications. The TU Delft spin-off also gave a presentation at Morpheus 2024, ESA’s workshop on Edge AI and Neuromorphic Hardware Accelerators (
https://indico.esa.int/event/514/timetable/#20240506).
🇪🇺 Yesterday was Europe Day! 🌟 As we celebrate Europe's spirit of collaboration and cooperation, we're excited to show highlights from our recent participation in the Morpheus Workshop 2024 at the European Space Agency - ESA/ESTEC. Our very own Dr. Petruț Antoniu Bogdan gave a presentation...
www.linkedin.com
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And then there is of course also fortiss-tried and tested SpiNNaker…
In addition to the three projects mentioned earlier, the job description also casually lists “efficient Lidar neuromorphic processing for automated driving”.
Wow, that is surely gonna be quite a doorstopper of a Master’s thesis!
I guess we’ll just have to wait for the promised updates, then, to find out what fortiss has in store for Akida and TENNs.
Key Takeaways from Tony’s Statement
Final Strategic Implications
1. Shift Toward Model + Hardware Integration
. When BrainChip's SP explodes, it might kill me 
️
] of security and defense industry experts.
mhhhhhmmmm
Likelihood of BrainChip tech in Iron Dome?
Very high
Not publicly confirmed
