This year, the world's leading trade fair for industry opened its doors in the capital of Lower Saxony under the motto "Think Tech Forward". The Federal Chancellor was accompanied by a delegation of around 50 other guests, including his wife Charlotte Merz, the Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche (CDU), the Minister President of Lower Saxony Olaf Lies (SPD) as well as Valdis Dombrovskis, Commissioner for Economic Efficiency and Productivity in the European Commission, and around 100 journalists. Frederike Beckhoff, Corporate Development at Beckhoff Automation, welcomed the guests and introduced them to the family-run technology company, the principle of PC-based control and the products required for this, as well as exemplary fields of application for automation technology.

Federal Chancellor welcomes the partner country Brazil with Physical AI

Johannes Beckhoff, Product Management at Beckhoff Automation, then presented the company's central topic at Hannover Messe 2026: the fusion of artificial intelligence and classic machine control as the basis for physical AI. Using a technology demonstrator in which game pieces with numbers and letters are moved by the modular industrial robot ATRO, he showed that not only the programming of machines, but also the control itself can be carried out by AI. The AI runs completely locally in the machine - independently of cloud services. "This means that the machine operators have sovereignty over the AI and also over their data," says Johannes Beckhoff.

The Federal Chancellor gave the artificial intelligence integrated in the TwinCAT automation software the command via text input to create a greeting for the partner country Brazil from the letters in the demonstrator. The AI then carried out the task and gave the robot commands via the controller in real time to form the words "Bom dia Brasil" (Good day Brazil). Johannes Beckhoff explained: "We have given the machine a real brain. This so-called 'machine brain' is an example of how AI not only generates text or images, but can also interact with the physical world."

The application demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) have long since left the chat window and can intervene in real motion sequences. This makes it clear that physical AI can fundamentally change the industry and offers considerable potential for the development of machines and systems.