Four years of development. A moment in Japan.
International Award for Joint Research by RAPA and the Vienna University of Technology
At first glance, it’s “just” a motor-pump unit. For Andreas Lang, however, it represents much more: four years of development work, countless test series, and a passion for continuously improving a technical challenge.
For this work, the RAPA development engineer, together with project partners from the Technical University of Wie, was awarded the Best Paper Award at IPEC 2026 in Nagasaki, Japan—one of the highest honors at the international conference.
This award-winning research focuses on the further development of control systems for electric motor-pump units. The goal is to eliminate the need for an additional bearing sensor in the future and to replace its function with intelligent control algorithms. This will reduce installation space and costs while further increasing the efficiency of the systems.
The results of this joint research are being directly incorporated into the further development of RAPA’s motor-pump units. In this way, the project makes an important contribution to future generations of vehicles and demonstrates how research and industrial development go hand in hand.
“I traveled to Japan with relatively low expectations. When our paper won the award, I couldn’t really believe it at first.”
To this day, he remains particularly enthusiastic about the versatility of his project.
“Our motor-pump units bring together electronics, software, mechanics, and hydraulics. It is precisely this interplay that makes the development so exciting.”
The collaboration between RAPA and TU Wien has been in place for several years and continues to evolve through ongoing research projects.
With approximately 1,200 participants, over 800 technical presentations, and researchers from around the world, IPEC ranks among the most important conferences in the field of power electronics and electric drive technology. The Best Paper Award in the highest category was awarded to only five papers.
The award once again confirms RAPA’s high standards in development and its successful combination of industrial practice and scientific research.