ICM Programs: Incubating Innovation
The Early Ride Program serves as an incubator for innovative ideas from young scientists. Through coaching, mentoring, and collaboration with other start-ups and companies, participants learn to evaluate the potential of their ideas, refine their business models, and take the first steps toward founding their companies. "The most important lesson we learned is that we need to open up - to potential customers, so we can develop a market-ready product, and to potential co-founders from industry, who bring knowledge we, as researchers, don't have," says Jannis Noeren.
To develop a functional demonstrator in record time, the ICM's transfer bottom-up projects proved to be an ideal complement. With streamlined applications, fast funding decisions, and short project durations, researchers were able to focus entirely on developing their technology.
Advanced Charging System for Maximum Efficiency
AMPLINK expanded its expertise and team through collaboration with intralogistics companies and three new co-founders. The team gained valuable knowledge about intralogistics workflows, sales, and safety, which further enhanced their technology. The demonstrator now requires no floor-embedded components, making it easy to integrate into existing infrastructures and quickly adaptable.
The system's core principle remains the same: it combines charging surfaces, where AGVs can charge while in motion, with dedicated charging stops during idle times. The seamless integration of these two approaches gives AMPLINK's solution significantly higher efficiency than existing systems.
"With our dynamic charging system, it's possible to reduce AGV downtime to a minimum, significantly extend battery life, and use smaller batteries," explains Jannis Noeren. The demonstrator and the founding of AMPLINK lay the foundation for the start-up's next phase: collaboration with investors and customers.
