Innovations in AI and hydrogen measurement receive Hermes Awards at Hannover Messe

This year, the company Schunk was honored with the "Hermes Award" for an AI-based project during the ceremonial opening of the Hannover Messe. Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Minister of Education and Research, presented the award in the presence of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

The jury, chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, awarded the prize to the 2D Grasping Kit project. This application kit consists of a camera with lens, an industrial PC, AI software and an application-specific gripper.

The innovation lies in the generic, AI-based modeling of component variants and the transfer to a smaller training data set, which reduces training times for recognition. The intuitive user interface enables the reliable handling of different, randomly arranged parts from a conveyor belt, tray or supply table - even with changing light, color or background conditions. This allows recurring sorting or logistics tasks to be automated with little effort.

Hermes Startup Award

This year, the young company Archigas from Rüsselsheim received the coveted "Hermes Startup Award". The award-winning product is a sensor for measuring hydrogen. The sensor principle is based on an advanced thermal conductivity measurement on a microchip and was developed in collaboration with RheinMain University of Applied Sciences.