On 8 October 2026 TU Clausthal honoured its graduates of 1976 with golden diplomas, fifty years after they finished their studies. The ceremony took place in the Aula Academica in Clausthal-Zellerfeld. Kai Kunze gave the ceremonial lecture (Festvortrag) “Der erweiterte Mensch. Von der intelligenten Brille zum schwebenden Begleiter” (The augmented human: from smart glasses to a floating companion).
The talk began in 1976, with slide rules and punch cards, and followed four ways of extending the human. Smart glasses extend the senses. They notice fatigue, recognise a smile without a camera, let young designers see with ageing eyes, and record where an expert looks so that a learner’s gaze can be guided to the same spot. Sensors extend the body. Electrodes and ultrasound make the muscles of the vocal cords visible while someone sings, and wristbands carry the pulse and skin response of the audience onto the stage, where light and music follow them. A floating robot extends closeness. Cuddle-Fish is soft, filled with helium and flaps its wings like a ray; guests of a seniors’ café near Tokyo reached out to touch it without being asked. Avatar robots extend the scope of action. At the DAWN café in Tokyo, people with disabilities serve guests from home through robots, and one pilot can steer several robots at once.
Two companions came along. Cuddle-Fish drifted through the hall while student Hosea Simanjuntak played the piano, and the humanoid robot Bernd, wearing a doctoral hat, walked through the rows of guests. Andrea Langhorst of the alumni management organised the ceremony. Prof. Christian Bohn presented the diplomas for the presidium, and Prof. Otto Carlowitz spoke for the class of 1976.
The slides are available as a PDF, in German: Der-erweiterte-Mensch-GoldDiplom-2026-Kunze.pdf (2.5 MB). TU Clausthal’s press release on the ceremony (in German) has photos of the robots among the guests.