Germany: Lufft wins innovation award of Baden-Württemberg

The award includes prize money of 10.000 Euros. With the innovation of its new mobile road sensor MARWIS, the company from Fellbach triumphed over a field of 77 competitors. Peter Hofelich, the state secretary of the Ministry of Finance in Baden-Württemberg, presented the prize to Lufft managing directors Klaus Hirzel and Axel Schmitz-Hübsch. Since 1985, the Baden-Württemberg innovation award has celebrated medium-sized companies in the region who have developed outstanding technological innovations in the fields of industry, trade, and technological services.

At the prize ceremony, Lufft manager Klaus Hirzel explained: “Being inaugurated into the line of exceptional and creative developers in this state with this award fills us all with pride. The MARWIS sensor is a result of exceptional engineering expertise and a business plan focused on innovation rather than turnover. In doing so, we followed our credo: global thinking, advanced development, punctual and error-free availability.” Lufft is going to invest the prize money in the research and development of innovative future projects.

The innovative road sensor MARWIS impressed the 12 members of the expert jury, who are elected by the Ministry of Finance from the fields of business and technology. The mobile sensor was introduced in 2014 and is a road weather information sensor that detects road conditions and environmental data reliably. Installed on vehicles, MARWIS records data in real time and straight from the car.

Besides road surfaces (dry, humid, frozen, snow-capped and critically or chemically wet), the sensor records data such as road surface temperature, water film height, dew point temperature, ice percentage, friction and humidity. In doing so, the sensor increases road safety, offers evidence in the case of traffic accidents, aids route planning, and enhances the efficiency of winter service.

Latter will be investigated more precisely. The wholly Lufft owned subsidiary MICKS MSR GmbH which is specialized on meteorological all-in-one systems in the field of transport, received the order to be part of a leading-edge project of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt). The order serves the research and development of a distance-based prediction of slippery roads and thus the advancement of the winter road maintenance. In the course of this, the award-winning MARWIS sensor goes into action for the qualification of the data models. More information about the digital test field at the A9 at: http://bit.ly/1MrVa4q