The “Roboter in der Schule (RIDS)“, i.e., robots in school education, initiative was founded by Holger Kenn, Oliver Kohlbacher and myself to promote science and technology education. The project was to some extent based on CubeSystem hardware that we donated to schools. There were several very successful projects undertaken by school teams from the RIDS initiative. Achievements include winning the RoboCup junior world championship in 2005, winning 1st place on regional and the 3rd place on national level at Jugend Forscht, and winning the president’s award of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) for the most innovative youth project.
The two RIDS students Michael Rauls and Thomas Stahl together with the German (now ex-)chancelor Gerhard Schröder who is holding their award-winning robot. The robot has a holonomic drive, i.e., it can move in arbitrary directions while turning at the same time. The students build and programmed the robot with the CubeSystem.