Thursday, 25 June 2026, 4–5 p.m.:
AGV-Talk No. 54
Moderator: Dr Günter Ullrich, Head of Forum-FTS and VDI FA FTS
Guest: Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Michael ten Hompel
I am proud to say that I have managed to secure him for an FTS Talk: Professor Michael ten Hompel was a professor at Dortmund Technical University, where he held the Chair of Conveyor and Storage Systems and served as Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics.
He is now retired, but remains a senior professor at TU Dortmund (Information Logistics) and Principal Investigator at the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. He will be familiar to most of you – if not, see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_ten_Hompel and https://tenhompel.de/
Professor ten Hompel and I are the same age and have both followed a career path in intralogistics, he on the right-hand side of the Ruhr region, I on the left. OK, his career has been far more successful than mine, but we have nevertheless met often and have been discussing AI and humanoid robots at length over the past few weeks. That’s how the idea arose to cover this topic in an FTS Talk.
Here We Are!
His credo is: “The digitalisation of everything and the integration of artificial intelligence into everything will change everything for all of us.” This sums up quite well the direction our discussion will take. He rightly points to the exponential growth of many relevant developments.
To understand the power of humanoids, we will start with the topic of AI and then see whether our views on the significance and use of AI-based robots align. He says, “By 2026, the leasing rates for humanoid robots will be below the minimum wage in Germany.” …
I thoroughly enjoyed our exchange at the Material Flow Congress in Dortmund – which is why I’m really looking forward to our joint AGV talk!
You won’t want to miss this!
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