HELGA is part of the Infineon lab cluster, established through IT:U’s strategic cooperation with Infineon Austria.
This lab is a space where ideas become intelligent machines. By combining additive and subtractive manufacturing with electronics and software development, the lab enables students to design, fabricate, and program functional physical systems. HELGA is built around hands-on experimentation, empowering students to transform ideas into working prototypes and to shape technology rather than simply consume it.
Lab Persona
If HELGA were a person, she would be endlessly curious—always looking beneath surfaces and beyond interfaces. She believes technology should be understood, not hidden, and that true innovation begins with knowing how things work. HELGA values openness, adaptability, and creative reuse, encouraging students to question existing solutions and reimagine what machines can do. For her, agency comes from mastery, and mastery comes from making.
Key Equipment & Technology
HELGA brings together advanced digital manufacturing technologies that allow students to give form to complex ideas. Students have the opportunity to engage in the design and fabrication of mechanical and electronic components, devices and robots using both additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques. The integration of advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, the incorporation of electronic components at the electronics workstations and the development of embedded software architectures for sensing, actuation, and control are central to the lab. Together, these technologies enable students to bring complex, digitally manufactured systems to life.
Project-based learning
Learning projects in HELGA range from developing custom mobile devices to building small autonomous mobile robots equipped with sensors and actuators that perceives and respond to their environment. Students explore real-world challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration—for example, designing intelligent sensor-guided grippers for automated crop and fruit harvesting. Graduates leave equipped to apply digital manufacturing and robotic systems design to practical problems across diverse industries.
Meet the expert
Meet Robert Fina, LearnLab Expert and Lecturer for HELGA. With a background in software development, information technology, and electrical and control engineering, he brings experience in robotics and embedded systems.
Before joining IT:U, he conducted research at the Johannes Kepler University Linz on control algorithms for heterogenous fleets.
At the Prototype Lab, he instructs students in the transition from ideas to prototyping through mechanical and software design, assembly planning, electronics integration, and hands-on, iterative engineering.
