Zukunft Handwerk 2025

At the International Crafts Fair (IHM) in Munich, under the banner "The Future of Crafts," OTH Regensburg presented its collaborative project "CyberCraft," which links the manual skills of the trades with digital technologies such as robotics, AI, and augmented reality. HWK President Dr. Georg Haber and Prof. Christophe Barlieb (Faculty of Architecture) see this as a promising recipe for success, while emphasizing that the master craftsman (Bachelor Professional) should be treated as equivalent to academic degrees in practice. Barlieb and his colleagues Florian Weininger, Thomas Linner, Merve Karamara, and Marc Schmailzl made clear that the goal is not to automate everything or replace people — since the trades create one-of-a-kind work — but to put new tools in craftspeople's hands and make the professions more attractive, for instance through AR-assisted assembly of materials.