This year, the company SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG, from Lauffen (Germany) is the winner of the HERMES AWARD. The specialist in clamp systems is thus rewarded with one of the most prestigious international industrial awards. Schunk is both a traditional company run by the founding family and a global player. The winner receives the award on April 23 from the Federal Minister for Education and Research, Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka, as part of the opening ceremony of HANNOVER MESSE. „The winning product facilitates human-robot collaboration, thus constituting a central component of the networked factory. With this characteristic, it fits perfectly into HANNOVER MESSE, which is issuing important impulses for the development of Industry 4.0 again this year as well.”
says Dr. Jochen Köckler, Member of the Board of Directors of Deutsche Messe AG. SCHUNK receives the award for its JL1 gripper, an intelligent grasping module designed for human-robot collaboration and endowed with the ability to communicate and interact directly with humans. The sensors incorporated in JL1 detect the approach of a person and allow a reaction adapted to the specific situation, avoiding any contact between the worker and the robot.
Safety intelligence is integrated into the gripper itself and enables highly flexible handling and assembly processes to be carried out using parallel and angular grippers of any geometry. The gripper fingers are equipped with dynamometric jaws and tactile sensors, which enable adaptive operations. Two camera systems visualize the work area in 3D, facilitating the detection of the piece to be gripped. The jury chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. hc mult. Wolfgang Wahlster, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), was impressed with the product. Being a self-learning system, the collaborative gripper offers ideal features for highly flexible handling scenarios of Industry 4.0, in which people and robots work in coordination.
In Industry 4.0 environments, due to the demand for barrier-free collaboration between people and robots, as well as the small batch sizes, the high variety of parts and the frequent readjustments of the machines, it is necessary to transfer a part of the system intelligence to terminal elements. With the JL1 system, Schunk has met this requirement perfectly, so our jury's decision was unanimous,” adds Prof. Wahlster. In addition to the winner Schunk from Lauffen, the following companies were among the award candidates: AGS-Verfahrenstechnik GmbH from Stade (Germany), Augumenta from Oulu (Finland), Linz Center of Mechatronics from Linz (Austria) and Noonee AG from Zurich (Switzerland).
Both the award-winning system and the nominated products and procedures will be on display at the companies' stands during HANNOVER MESSE 2017 (April 24-28). In addition, all the products nominated for the HERMES AWARD 2017 and the associated companies will be thoroughly informed at the innovation stand "tech transfer – Gateway2Innovation" in Hall 2. They will all be honored on Monday, April 24 from 11.30:12.10 a.m. to XNUMX pm by Minister Wanka and Professor Wahlster.
HANNOVER MESSE – Get new technology first!
The world's leading industrial fair took place in Hannover from 24 to 28.04.17. Following the main theme Integrated Industry – Creating Value“, HANNOVER MESSE is the global meeting point for all topics revolving around the digitization of production (Industry 4.0) and energy systems (Integrated Energy). It brings together seven key fairs in one place: Industrial Automation, MDA – Motion, Drive & Automation, Digital Factory, Energy, ComVac, Industrial Supply and Research & Technology. Poland is the Partner Country of HANNOVER MESSE 2017.
