The Hermes Award, one of the world’s most coveted technology prizes, goes to SCHUNK, the competence leader for gripping systems and clamping technology from Lauffen, Germany. During the opening of the Hannover Messe by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Managing Partner of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG, Henrik A. Schunk received the award from Federal Minister for Education, Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka.
The world’s first intelligent gripping module for human/robot collaboration, SCHUNK Co-act Gripper JL1 received the award. It directly interacts and communicates with humans. For Henrik A. Schunk this award is a milestone in the history of the SCHUNK company group: “My team and I are proud that we have succeeded with the SCHUNK Co-act Gripper JL1 in achieving a decisive step on the way to highly flexible handling scenarios of Industry 4.0, and thus to the smart production.“
For the first time ever in the history of the Hermes Award a gripping module was the winner of this coveted trophy. The award was based on the judgement of an independent jury, chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster, Chairman of the Managing Board of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Already in 2015, SCHUNK had succeeded in bouncing up into the top five of the Hermes Award, and had achieved the move into the leading group of technology innovations – at that time with the SCHUNK eGRIP, a web-based three-dimensional design tool for additive manufactured gripping fingers.
