Empowering the future: OMRON donates to i-bots to promote robotics education for children
27 April 2023
OMRON celebrates its 90th birthday and donates €10,000 to i-bots student teams.
Celebrating the company’s 90 years of innovation and underlining OMRON’s commitment to inspire the youth about innovative technologies, OMRON donated 10,000 euros to the i-bots robotics organisation.
Aiming to support and shape the future of manufacturing, the company welcomed and had a talk with some of the kids at their stand in Hannover Messe 2023.
The company was also delighted to have Lower Saxony's Economics Minister, Olaf Lies, Regional Councilor of Hannover and Head of the Department of Economics, Transport and Education, Ulf-Birger Franz, as well as VDMA’s Educational Policy Officer, Stefan Grötzschel, visit their booth.
i-bots: Experimenting and inspiring with robotics
The i-bots are a talented group of around 60 students, aged eight to 19, from Roberta RegioZentrum Hannover, focused on constructing and programming various robot systems.
The Roberta RegioZentrum Hannover, certified by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, is the leading hub for robotics activities in the Hannover region's school sector, supporting students, educators, schools, and companies.
The i-bots teams experiment with robotics at the prestigious Leibniz Universität Hannover and have won many international robotics competitions, including the World Championship for RoboCup Junior. i-bots provide an opportunity for students to develop their robotics skills, preparing them for future careers.
Together with i-bots and VDMA, OMRON is looking into the future of industry and automation in Germany, and how associations and companies in Germany can work more closely and effectively together to offer children and young people a better and more inspiring environment in modern industry, also to respond to the looming labour shortage of experts in the sector.
Economics Minister Lies underlines the importance of such cooperation: "In order to strengthen Lower Saxony and Germany as a business location and set the course for a successful, sustainable and productive future, it is essential that more connections are made and synergies are used.
"Everyone benefits from this: organisations, as well as companies, research and development, politics and society. Particular attention is paid to children and young people.
"In this case, such cooperation is exemplary. Because one of our biggest challenges in all the changes that lie ahead of us is that we have to get young people excited about technology. They are the professionals of tomorrow."
Klaus Kluger, Sales Director Central and East Europe at OMRON, agrees: “Supporting the youth is crucial to OMRON’s commitment to contributing to a better society. For example, we invite children and young people to activities such as Girls' Day in the company, organise open days, cooperate with educational institutions such as the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences, make our technology available and more.
“Our experts offer training courses and workshops to students. At the same time, we support important education and research initiatives financially – like i-bots in this case – as well as through donations to universities and other institutions.”
“It has been a pleasure to see this kind of collaboration come to life at the Hannover Messe,” Stefan Grötzschel, Educational Policy Officer at the VDMA, concludes: “To combat the shortage of specialised staff in mechanical engineering in the future, a clever combination of cooperative school programs, along with traditional offline and online measures, will be necessary.”
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