Project CREaTE (Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics) is an innovative eduactional approach to enabling students in robotics and autonomous systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into the development processes. In cooperation with start-ups from the local Gateway 49 accelerator, students define challenges and conceptualize solutions. These solutions are then evaluted and discussed from an ethical perspective. The necessary background is taught via the flipped classroom approach. Solving problems is a core competency addressed in engineering student education. The course is an attempt to stay true to this, while also acknowleding the problem-aware, discourse and concept-oriented approaches that exist within moral philosophy and associated disciplines.

The innovative course is supported by a tandem fellowship of the Stifterverband as a joint project between physicist, philosopher and university didactician Gunter Bombaerts and the Ethical Innovation Hub's Christian Herzog.