Almost everyone has seen how a modern industrial robot works on television. Now, students in grades 7 to 9 at the university of applied sciences in Friedberg learned how to programme one themselves.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Brillowski, who teaches robotics and heads the mechatronics lab at the Giessen -Friedberg University of Applied Sciences, extended the invitation. For a week, students from the Weidig School in Butzbach and the Wolfgang Ernst School in Büdingen took the opportunity to work in small groups on two industrial robots. At the end, the students were able to present their teachers with their first self-written programmes and were delighted that the robots actually performed the operations they had programmemed. Wolfgang Bacher, head of Department in Büdingen, and Wolfgang Berndt, who leads a "Jugend forscht" (Young Researchers) group at the Weidig School, watched with admiration as the robots, for example, picked up building blocks and sorted them. The students enjoyed their work, and for several of them, the week in the lab concluded with a clear decision: "I'm going to be a mechatronics engineer."

The relatively new field of mechatronics lies at the interface of mechanical and electrical engineering. Raising awareness of it was Prof. Brillowski's goal: "With events like the lab days at the University of Applied Sciences in Friedberg, we want to give students the opportunity to learn about the profession of mechatronics engineer through hands-on experience. But we also want them to discover how exciting technology can be – and robotics in particular."

The Department Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, and Materials Technology plans to hold the lab days regularly in the future. Teachers who would like to visit the robotics lab with their students can contact its headThis email address is protected against spambots! JavaScript must be enabled to view it!).