In her welcome address, HNU President Prof. Dr Julia Kormann encouraged the students to continue on their path with courage, confidence and perseverance. She particularly emphasised the importance of teamwork and collaboration: “The experiences that students gain together with fellow students and with lecturers often remain in their memories for much longer than individual marks. Teamwork, collaboration and open dialogue are skills that extend far beyond one’s studies. Our graduates can draw on these academic methods and experiences time and again in their professional lives.”
Aliens, action and adventure
A total of 27 games were available to try out and play at Games Kickstart – ranging from role-playing games to single-player and multiplayer titles. Visitors were able to immerse themselves in fascinating worlds, chat with the developers and teachers, share feedback and gain new inspiration.
TechLab Exhibition
Another particular highlight was the TechLab Exhibition, at which 35 students presented their projects from the courses ‘Data Science Project’, ‘Autonomous Cars and Connected Mobility’, ‘Future Mobility’ and ‘Intelligent Agents’. The projects were supervised by Prof. Dr Dany Meyer, Prof. Martin Stirzel and Prof. Dr Stefan Faußer.
Under the theme ‘hands-on applied AI’, visitors were able to try out numerous innovations for themselves. The projects on display included an autonomous JetAuto, an AI-powered basketball shooting trainer, the ‘carpacity’ app for forecasting and monitoring occupancy levels at the HNU car park, and intelligent agents that learn to master games such as Snake or Rocket League independently. The exhibition was complemented by forward-looking concepts on topics such as smart grids, sustainable mobility and the vision of the 15-minute city.
Attendees particularly appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with the project teams and gain insights into the development and research processes. At the end of the event, awards were presented to the best projects in the following categories:
- Innovation: AI Basketball Coach (shot analysis and personalised training tips)
- Practical Benefit: carpacity (car park forecasting and monitoring for the HNU campus)
- Audience Favourite: patrolBot (autonomous reconnaissance robot)
The winning project, ‘carpacity’, even provides an application that can be used by anyone interested and offers forecasts of car park occupancy on the HNU campus.
Awards at Games Kickstart
The games on display at Games Kickstart were also recognised by an external jury in various categories. The award for Best Booth went to Voluntold. DAWNBREAKER won both the Best Sound and Best Game awards, whilst CATENA received the award for Best Art.
In addition, all visitors to Kickstart were able to vote for their favourite game. DAWNBREAKER also won the Players’ Choice Award.
Creative work from the print sector
The Information Management and Corporate Communication (IMUK) degree programme was also represented at the Kickstart Event. The students presented a selection of prints from their semester projects, offering an insight into their creative and design-based work.
