The 12^th International Fluid Power Conference (IFK) will be held in Dresden on March 9 - 11, 2020. As one of the world's most important conferences in the field of hydraulic and pneumatic drive and control technology, the IFK has established itself as a main exchange platform for the industry's experts in Europe. On an international level, it offers operators, manufacturers and scientists the opportunity to present innovations and discuss development trends.

The theme of the 12^th IFK is "Fluid Power - Future Technology", which focuses on the most promising developments in the industry. The imminent implementation of 5G opens up numerous possibilities for the development of intelligent system structures, which will allow cost-efficient and demand-oriented drives in decentralized arrangement. In addition, the rapid real-time exchange of data enables the application of a large variety of predictive maintenance strategies, which will significantly improve the availability of fluid power systems and their components and enhance their usability over the entire lifetime. This will contribute to a more responsible use of the limited resources available.

On the first day of the event, the symposium will be devoted to method-focused and fundamental aspects. The other two days of the conference will offer a comprehensive application and technology-oriented overview of the state of the art in fluid power technologies. In this unique combination, the IFK is a one-of-a-kind platform to exchange basic research between universities and industrial end-users. A parallel exhibition will offer the possibility to obtain information directly about products of tomorrow and to network with manufacturers, researchers and industrial application users.

The IFK is addressing application-related topics in the field of stationary and mobile hydraulics, pneumatics and special fluid power technology applications, e.g. medical technology or subsea hydraulics. Detailed studies of hydraulic, pneumatic, actuatoric and sensoric components as well as of fluid fundamental are presented. Next to novel decentralized structures, many other questions regarding system design are covered in the system and system integration topic group. Examples are: energy-saving and recuperative concepts or simulation-based design and optimization. Problems of signal processing and artificial intelligence in fluid technology are considered under the aspect of digitalization. The topics mentioned serve as a guideline for an interesting and also extraordinary scientific contribution.

The IFK team around Prof. Jürgen Weber is looking forward to many exciting contributions for the 12^th IFK 2020 in Dresden.