Deutsche Messe is accepting entries for the 2024 Hermes Award, which will be presented by Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Germany's Minister of Education and Research, during the opening ceremony of Hannover Messe (Hanover Fair) on April 21. The deadline for companies and institutions participating in the fair to submit their entries for the prize is February 21. Besides the Hermes Award, submissions are also being invited again for the Hermes Startup Award.
The independent jury will be chaired for the first time by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, president of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Under his chairmanship, the jury members will nominate three products each for the Hermes Award and for the Hermes Startup Award from among the submissions, and they will determine the respective winner from those nominees. Bosch Rexroth, Beckhoff and ACS Climatics were selected as the three finalists in 2023.
The degree of technological innovation, benefits for industry, the environment and society, as well as cost-effectiveness and implementation maturity are key criteria in assessing which entry merits the award.
Every year, Deutsche Messe honors a company with the Hermes Award in recognition of a product that demonstrates a particularly high degree of technological innovation. Only those technologies that have already been proven in industrial practice are considered. Companies can apply on the Hermes Award website.
Bosch Rexroth won the 2023 Hermes Award for its Smart Flex Effector project, which consisted of a sensor-based compensation module—end effector—for robots, featuring independent, precise kinematics in six degrees of freedom. It can be used in handling or joining processes with tight tolerances in automation technology or robotics, with loads of up to 6 kg. The position of workpieces or handling objects can be sensed by robots which are outfitted with the Smart Flex Effector. The range of applications is diverse, since it is also suitable for human-robot collaboration as an add-on device for a variety of robots.
The 2023 Hermes Startup Award went to the Netherlands. The young company MantiSpectra from Eindhoven was awarded for its ChipSense product. It is a fully integrated near-infrared sensor—the smallest of its kind on the market, with a footprint of 1 mm2. The sensor enables rapid, highly accurate analysis and is used directly on the production line, from where it delivers real-time data. This makes it possible for defects to be detected as soon as they occur and for savings to be made through immediate quality control on the spot on the production line. The product is already in use in industry, agriculture and food processing.
The 2024 theme of Hanover Fair is Industrial Transformation, bringing together exhibiting companies from the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and digital industries, as well as the energy sector to present solutions for future production methods and the energy supply. Some timely topics will include Industry 4.0 and Manufacturing-X; industrial energy consumption; digitization, artificial intelligence and machine learning; carbon-neutral production; and hydrogen and fuel cells. The program is complemented by a series of conferences and forums, which will run simultaneously with the exhibition April 22-26.
