The new "hdg robotic 4.0" course, which accompanies lessons, prepares pupils in years 7 to 9 for digitalization and teaches them key skills in programming and controlling microcontrollers and robots. The working group, which started at the HDG in the 2018/2019 school year, comprises 16 participants. The course is scheduled to last two years. Certificates can be obtained upon successful participation, which offer great advantages when entering professional life.

Key qualifications for secondary school pupils

"With special and outstanding offers such as 'hdg robotic 4.0', we would like to attract young people to our secondary modern school who, with their more practically oriented interests and strengths, are much better off with us than at grammar school - and who can be very well qualified for apprenticeships in the trades or in the digitalized working environment at our "profiled community secondary modern school"," say the subject teachers and project managers Hans Werner Meurer and Christian Zimbelmann, describing the school's objectives. In a further expansion stage of "hdg robotic 4.0", the Hans-Dietrich-Genscher-Schule would like to bring other strong partners on board, such as the Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

Partnership with Yaskawa

The Japanese technology group Yaskawa, with its European headquarters in Eschborn, is also supporting the initiative as part of a partnership with know-how transfer, support and technical equipment. The robot manufacturer is providing a fully functional training cell. Yaskawa offers these in different versions for educational institutions of all kinds at special conditions.

The MotoSim VRC simulation software makes it possible for entire classes to program a robot. At the heart of the mobile module is a Motoman GP8 industrial robot with a payload capacity of 8 kg, as is often used in industrial practice. It is controlled and programmed using the latest generation of YRC1000 compact controllers. The supervising teachers have already received training in advance at the Yaskawa Academy in Eschborn. One teaching module of the working group will also take place there.

Investing in the future

For Yaskawa, this commitment, as well as other intensively cultivated links with universities, chambers of trade and other educational institutions, is not only a social obligation, but also an investment in the future. "The digital pact, i.e. the publicly funded expansion of digital skills and corresponding technical infrastructure in the education sector, is on everyone's lips. As an industrial company, we can support and implement specific projects much more quickly and directly. And we are doing this emphatically. As a technology group, we are dependent on well-trained specialists in the long term, especially in Germany as a high-tech location," explains Bruno Schnekenburger, COO of Yaskawa Europe GmbH.