Small and medium-sized companies in particular struggle with the complexity of personnel-intensive processes such as sorting, packaging and quality control. Added to this is the lack of skilled workers, which makes the development and implementation of individual solutions even more difficult.

This is exactly where the idea of ​​the founding team of “Klag Robotics” comes in: through the use of AI-supported robots and feeding systems that are equipped with integrated cameras, an optical inspection of the products is possible. These systems significantly simplify and optimize traditional pick-and-place, assembly, packing and repackaging tasks. This eliminates the need for employees to carry out stressful and unergonomic tasks, such as the difficult conversion of machines. The “Klag Robotics” project was made possible by funding of 878,000 euros from the Distr@l programme of the Hessian Ministry for Digitalization and Innovation to the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen ( THM ).

The Hessian Digital Minister Prof. Dr. Kristina Sinemus emphasized the importance of such university initiatives with the aim of a spin-off: “Projects like Klag Robotics impressively show how digitalization and artificial intelligence can solve very specific challenges in industry. They not only contribute to increasing efficiency, but also to reducing the workload on skilled workers. This is an important step in addressing the shortage of skilled workers and ensuring the competitiveness of our companies,” she said during the company visit to the pilot customer PREBENA in Schotten.

The THM project and research team led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Udo Fiedler from Business Administration and Engineering department in Friedberg works together with members of the Exist founding team "Klag Robotics" as well as several pilot partners from the Central Hesse and Vogelsberg region.

“Promoting young founders plays a major role at THM . The technology from Klag Robotics has very high potential to offer small and medium-sized companies in particular a solution in times of labor shortages. I am therefore all the more pleased for the Klag Robotics team that the project is being funded by the Distr@l programme and could lead to the founding of a company," said THM President Prof. Dr. Matthias Willems.

Henrik Klag, project manager and one of the co-founders of Klag Robotics, concluded: “We live in a fast-moving and globally networked world. In addition to many advantages, this also brings with it increased competition for industrial companies. The demand from German SMEs drives us to overcome individual challenges through tailor-made solutions: be it increasing product diversity with minimal loss of time due to changeover times, bridging personnel bottlenecks or creating more ergonomic working conditions for employees. Klag Robotics has set itself the goal of supporting small and medium-sized companies and helping to maintain and increase their international competitiveness."

The project is funded via funding line 4A of the funding programme Distr@l – Strengthening digitalization, living transfer. The state of Hesse supports start-up teams at universities with up to five people who want to validate their research results in a practice-oriented manner. The aim of such a project is to create a company from the university (spin-off) and to commercially exploit the validated research results. Twelve projects from the universities have already been funded with around 8.2 million euros.