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. A top-class 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.

"The future of supplying people and industry in our country lies in automation. Only with sustainable innovations, especially for production and logistics, can we successfully master the economic and social challenges of tomorrow," says Prof. Dr. Holger Hanselka. "From the jury's point of view, the decision to award the prize to the 2D Grasping Kit was based not only on its ease of use but also on the robustness of the development for many of the upcoming automation solutions. On behalf of the entire jury, I would like to congratulate the company on winning the Hermes Award 2024!"

The Hermes Award

Every year for more than 20 years, Deutsche Messe has honored a company with the Hermes Award during the Hannover Messe trade fair. This is the most important international industry prize. The prize is awarded to a product or solution with a particularly high degree of technological innovation. Market maturity is an important criterion. This year's nominees were Bosch Rexroth with a system for the industrial dismantling and recycling of batteries from electrically powered vehicles, Siemens with the 'SiGreen' CO2 management tool and Schunk with the '2D Grasping Kit'.