Open Project Day with nxtAIM highlight-, deep dive-, and poster presentations at the University of Freiburg

The nxtAIM Open Project Day, held at the University of Freiburg on February 25, 2026, brought together project partners, experts from academia and industry, and members of the funding body to showcase the joint progress of the consortium. With around 120 participants, the event fostered lively exchanges with nxtAIM experts and provided an in-depth look at current research directions and project achievements.

Central Topics and Project Highlights

A key focus of the project lies in advancing generative AI methods. Instead of training functions directly from data, the nxtAIM consortium models the data itself, creating the framework for versatile foundation models, thereby paving the way for versatile foundation models in automated driving.

In the area of training infrastructure, data, and collaborative development, nxtAIM achieved significant milestones in 2025 that were central to the project’s technological progress. These included the successful acquisition of computing resources at Europe’s first exascale supercomputer JUPITER, enabling largescale model development.

The required data are provided through a concept established in nxtAIM, enabling the GDPR-compliant use of proprietary data from multiple partners. Together, these accomplishments laid the foundation for coordinated data handling, shared development pipelines, and the training of generative models tailored specifically to automated driving. These method-driven contributions align closely with broader European efforts to promote federated training and open, industry-wide collaboration, approaches that are already deeply embedded in nxtAIM’s work.

Highlight Presentations and Guest Speakers

The day was enriched by a keynote from Prof. Andreas Geiger (University of Tübingen), who offered insights into current research trends in AI-driven perception and generative modeling. His talk provided a strong insight to „The Role of Synthetic Data for Autonomous Intelligence”. Guests were welcomed by Dr. Ernst Stöckl-Pukall (BMWE), who emphasized the importance of collaborative AI research initiatives such as nxtAIM for Germany’s and Europe’s technological competitiveness, virtually welcomed by Ms. Hildegard Müller, President of the VDA and by the nxtAIM coordinators Dr. Jörg Reichardt (Aumovio) and Dr. Julian Schmidt (Mercedes-Benz).

Engaging Talks and Poster Sessions

The program included highlight presentations on the consortium’s latest achievements, deep‑dive sessions with lively discussions, and a poster session that encouraged networking among researchers and industry.

Beyond engineering achievements, nxtAIM demonstrated a strong international research presence. Project partners presented their results at major conferences across Europe, the United States, Korea, and Australia, like the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), International Automated Vehicle Validation Conference (IAVVC), and The Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).

What’s next for nxtAIM?

Looking ahead, the project is entering its final phase. The next major milestone will be the final event in Frankfurt in November 2026, where the consortium will present real-world demonstrations and the completed nxtAIM results.