Today is the last day of the most important event of the industry calendar, the HMI 2007, which happens every year in Hannover, Germany. There, companies, research intitutes and universities show their lastest developments in technology. The HfG Offenbach Design School participated once again with the supervision of Professor Dieter Mankau.

The project I have been working on since August 2006 together with Dr. Deane Harder from the Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg and Dr. Markus Milwich from ITV Denkendorf – Institute for Textile and Fibre Research Denkendorf was presented at the Bionik – engineering powered by nature booth. Done in collaboration with Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, the project concerned the development of new shock absorbing concept for a transport pallet used for transporting overseas sensible products like huge computer servers.

Unlike other years, the Research & Technology Hall showed fewer breakthroughs in technology as last year. One thing to notice is that there isn’t yet much of a communication between engineers and designers in order to present prototypes of technologies closer to reality. Designers can play an important roll inside a research team because of their ability to foresee applications of technologies and to communicate speciall caracteristics of a future product through design. Still, most of the research works lack the ability to communicate what are they meant for mainly because of the absence of a product designer.Best of Hannover Industry Fair 2007