Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
One of the largest and most prestigious research and education institutions in Germany was first established as a polytechnical school in 1825. It was modeled after the French Ecole Polytechnique. In 1865, the Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden changed the status of the school and raised it to Hochschule, which is an institution of higher education, and it was known as the University of Karlsruhe. People still called it as Fridericiana as an honor to Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden until 1902.
In 1885, it was renamed as Institute of Technology and in 1967 it became a full university. This gave them the right to offer regular doctorate degrees, although back in 1899, all technical universities, which included the University of Karlsruhe, were already granted the right to award doctorate degrees to deserving students.
In 1966, a central computer laboratory was established in the university, making them one of the leading institutions in computer science in the country. Three years later, the Department of Informatics was founded.
In April 2006, the school was given the contract for the foundation of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), which was duly signed by Prof. Horst Hippler and Dr. Dieter Ertmann from the University of Karlsruhe, and Prof. Manfred Popp and Sigurd Lettow from the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.
They were selected to emulate the leading American, technical university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1985, the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research was established, and this saw the merging of the university and the research center.
This was the first the step to bring the university and research center together. But it was not until February 2008 that the merger became official. Through the agreement made by the state Baden-Wurttemberg and federal government of Germany, the school was officially established as the Karsruhe Institute of Technology on October 1, 2009.
Today, the school has 11 Faculties, which includes the Faculties of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Humanities and Social Sciences, Architecture, Civil Engineering, Geology, and Ecological Sciences, the Faculty of Mechanical engineering, Chemical and Process engineering, Electrical engineering and Information Technology, Computer science, and the Faculty of Economics and Business engineering.
As one of the leading institutions in the country, KIT, through its Robotics Research Group, has developed an autonomous robot that can perform simple assembly operations in the laboratory, with the purpose of enabling them to develop new technologies for advanced robotic machines for industrial use.
The said robot has a mobile platform, complex sensors, two controllers, and an expert system. The programming on the robot will be done through the use of a task-oriented instruction. The Institute for process Control and Robotics inside KIT is also one venue where students research about industrial automation, which comprises conception and realization of sensor based autonomous robots for a specific task in production.
The center is responsible for the development of several robots through the CoMiRo- Collective and MicroRobotics. Among the robots they have developed are the Jasmine robots and the 3mm x 3mm x 3mm I-SWARM robots.
