Flanders Make & Nerdland

Flanders Make at Nerdland Festival

Flanders Make once again had an extensive presence at the 2024 Nerdland Festival. We were part of the joint booth there with VIB, VITO and imec, the other strategic research centers. Once again this year we did our utmost to get children, young people and adults excited about scientific research and industry. To this end, we had two fun demos on hand.

On the one hand, there was the Connect 4-robot that used a number of relevant technologies such as AI, robotics and vision systems to see, record and place the discs in the game board. An underlying algorithm determined the best move by looking ahead a number of turns; whether it was played, in turn, depended rather on the difficulty level chosen. The robot played almost constantly for 2 days, 250 games were played.

Another demo was a robot that placed the signatures of Lieven Scheire and Hetty Helsmoortel on books, cards and all kinds of pieces of paper and cardboard. The robot did this 10 hours a day almost continuously and was able to hand out 1600 signatures, a number that would undoubtedly give the real Lieven and Hetty cramps. Fun fact: for those 1600 signatures, 7 pens were written blank!

Onze demonstraties

Proud sponsor of Nerdland Podcast

In addition to our presence at the Nerdland Festival 2024, we are also the proud sponsor of the episode being recorded there. In doing so, we are supporting a great initiative in science communication but at the same time we can also bring our services and job opportunities to the attention of a loyal audience of Nerdland podcast listeners.

Who are we?

Flanders Make is the strategic research center for industry. From our offices all over Flanders, we stimulate open innovation through high-quality research. In addition, companies can collaborate with us on customised innovation. Finally, we also offer an extensive range of testing and validation infrastructure for testing and validating your products and production.

Our goal is to contribute to the technological development of the vehicles, machines and factories of the future. This is how we create added value for the manufacturing industry. Together, we help companies to innovate better and faster. In addition, we are strongly committed to international innovation cooperation and participation in European research projects.

Today, Flanders Make counts more than 900 researchers who work together full-time as a unique community on a common industrial research agenda.

In concrete terms

To help the industry move forward, at Flanders Make you will find all kinds of cutting-edge technologies, such as drones, robots, cobots, self-driving vehicles (agricultural machinery, forklifts, etc.), smart camera systems, AI, VR/AR, digital twins, etc. With these technologies we go to work to automate tedious, repetitive tasks, make workable for employees, increase productivity or simply help companies in the development of their innovative products.

Therefore, we are also always looking for companies looking for a partner in these types of innovative processes, as well as techies who want to join our team to tackle this type of research.

We are a “pioneering employer” and sports company, an organization with a focus on employees. So there are a lot of fun team events, the team is a very international company and there are a lot of opportunities to grow, experiment and learn.

Sounds interesting?

Both companies seeking a partner in innovation and interested applicants are more than welcome. Get in touch or check out our jobs website!

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