Amazone foundation awards the innovation prize 2015

The Amazone Foundation again has awarded two scientific degree theses the ‘Innovation Award 2015’. The official presentation of the Innovation Award was held at Agritechnica 2015 in Hanover. The chairman of the board of the foundation Carl-Albrecht Bartmer, president of the German Agricultural Society (DLG) and the Amazone directors Christian Dreyer and Dr. Justus Dreyer presented Award winners, Marc Heckmann and Christian Meltebrink, each with a certificate and a prize cheque of 2,000 and 3,000 Euros respectively.

In total 50 applications for the innovation award were received and 10 of them were shortlisted. The jury has paid particular attention to the criteria: topicality, creativity, vision, feasibility, practical relevance, individual approaches and the layout of the thesis.

The laudation was led by Dr. Rainer Resch, who, as a member of the general management is responsible at Amazone for research and development. "Amazone is an innovative company and that it is because it has innovative heads", and he went on to explain why the Amazone foundation always launches an innovation award at Agritechnica and rewards the best ideas from these young talents.

Prize winner Marc Heckmann received the Innovation Award 2015 for his bachelor thesis with the title ‘Action recommendation for the introduction of data spectacles at AGRAVIS Landtechnik workshops taking into consideration economic, technical, organisational and personal aspects’. For this thesis Dr. Resch explained: "Mr. Heckmann systematically evaluates technical, organisational and personal problems in connection with the introduction of data spectacles and derives targeted action recommendations in the sense of a professional change management. The jury was especially interested in the aspects of dealing with the problems, resulting from the introduction of new technology at an early stage and methodically; a procedure that technicians like to forget!" The thesis originated at the AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG in the framework of a study at the University of Osnabrück and it was supervised by Prof. Ralf Westerbusch.

Christian Meltebrink was awarded the Innovation Award 2015 for his master thesis with the title ‘ROS based validation concept for autonomous agricultural robots’. "This thesis not only deals with the technology itself, but takes a closer look at the framework conditions. For autonomous agricultural robots no specific standards exist regarding safety requirements and protection measures", Dr. Resch explained at the laudation. "However, clarification of the topics of safety is, in contrary, an important condition for the commercial introduction of autonomic agricultural robots. In his thesis Mr. Meltebrink considers regulations of other fields, carries out the transfer to agricultural robotics and creates a validation concept, which he verifies by simulation. Also in this context the jury was impressed by the approach to deal with the results of new technologies at an early stage." Christian Meltebrink has written his thesis within the framework of his master studies "Informatics – distributed and mobile applications" at the University of Osnabrück, supervised by Prof. Arno Ruckelshausen.

The AMAZONE foundation will offer the next "Innovation Award" on the occasion of Agritechnica 2017. The objective of the AMAZONE foundation, which was founded in 2008 at the company's anniversary ‘125 years AMAZONE’, is to promote science, research and education as well as education and training in the fields of agriculture and agricultural technology.  « Back to Archiv 2015