Last week, from 17 - 18 May 2019, the CYBATHLON Powered ARM and LEG Prosthesis Series organized by the Chair of High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H2T) of the Institute of Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) at KIT in collaboration with ETH Zurich took place.

Read More (German)

The AgiProbot project, founded by the Carls Zeiss Foundation, started on March 1, 2019. The goal of the project is the design of an agile production system that dynamically reacts to uncertain product specifications using artificial intelligence. The developed solutions will be tested in a demonstrator factory. The team, consisting of different KIT research groups, is coordinated by the KIT Institute of Production Science (wbk).

Project homepage (German only)

The Call for Papers for the Symposium on Assistive and Wearable Robotic Technologies (AsWeR) is open. Extended abstracts can be submitted under the following link: https://easychair.org/cfp/AsWeR19 

AsWeR19 takes place at the Trade Fair Centre in Karlsruhe and is co-located with the CYBATHLON Prosthesis Series 2019 and the REHAB19. AsWeR19 and the CYBATHLON Prosthesis Series 2019 are both organized by KIT in cooperation with the CYBATHLON team of the ETH Zürich.

Under the motto "Together protecting the KIT IT Infrastructure ", the research group SECUSO (AIFB) together with SCC, KASTEL and ZML prepared new KIT specific, easy to understand information material on cyber security based on previous research results. The KIT Safer Internet Day 2019 team will present and distribute this material to the interested public on February 5, from 11 am to 3 pm, in the KIT cafeteria.

This year, the Institute of Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) will once again open its doors and give an insight into its current research within the framework of the European Robotics Week 2018. Both labs involved, the High Performance and Humanoid Technologies Lab (H²T) and the Intelligent Process Automation and Robotics Lab (IPR), will offer guided laboratory tours and some other specials.

Further Information (German only)

The newly founded Helmholtz Information & Data Science School for Health (HIDSS4Health) has the goal to train young scientists to deal with the huge amount of data arising in health. This should result into innovative methods for diagnosis and therapy.  HIDSS4Health is a joint doctoral program of KIT, DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center) and the University of Heidelberg. Coordinator at KIT is Professor Ralf Mikut (IAI).

2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Advanced Manufacturing Institute (GAMI), a platform established by Professor Gisela Lanza, wbk Institute of Production Science, to facilitate Sino-German research and innovation programs related to Smart Manufacturing. On the occasion of the celebration that takes place on November 8, 2018 in Suzhou, the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Factory  will be officially opened. The new research facility focuses on the deployment of Artificial Intelligence technologies and cooperative robotics in smart manufactoring environments.

The French Académie des sciences and the German Akademie of Sciences Leopoldina jointly organize the Symposium "Data Science versus Motion Intelligence"  to strengthen the cooperation between France and Germany in Robotics AI. The organizers are Jean-Paul Laumond, CNRS-LAAS, France  and Tamim Asfour, KIT, Germany.

KIT News (German only)

ROBDEKON (German: "Robotersysteme für menschenfeindliche Umgebungen"), which started last June, deals with the deployment of robotics systems in contaminated area. The project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and is endowed with twelve million euros for four years. 

ARMAR-6, developed at the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H²T)  within the EU H2020 SecondHands  research project, is shown at CEBIT at KIT booth (G52 in hall 27). The robot demonstrates its capabilities to intelligently and proactively assist a human coworker in the context of an industrial maintenance task.

CEBIT Video (YouTube)

The magazine "Spektrum der Wissenschaft" organizes a seminar on the topic artificial intelligence, with particular focus on humanoid robotics and deep learning in computer vision. The speakers are Professor Rainer Stiefelhagen (cv:hci) and Professor Tamim Asfour (H²T). A tour through the labs of the H²T-IAR research group will close the program. 

Professor Michael Beigl (Chair for Pervasive Computing Systems) gave an interview in the Tagesschau (German national television news service) about the meaning of the Hannover Messe for the German economy. Further, he spoke about Germany’s current role and position in an international comparison in the areas of digitalization, Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence.

Interview (Tagesschau Website)

The new KUKA Udacity Robot Learning Lab will be established at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics - Intelligent Process Automation and Robotics Lab (IAR-IPR). The Lab, unique of its kind, will enable students worldwide to interact with real industrial robots through a remote interface and validate self-developed solutions directly on the robot.

KIT press release

Further information

The 34th AIK-Symposiums "Good Algorithms" was held on Friday, February 16, 2018, in the Tulla Hall at KIT. On this occasion, the former KCIST scientific spokesperson, Professor Hartmut Schmeck (AIFB), celebrated his farewell from teaching at KIT.

Professor Thomas Zwick (IHE) has been elevated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to IEEE Fellow, effective January 1, 2018, for his "contributions to millimeter wave transceivers". IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation.

The taxonomy of whole-body support poses developed at the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H²T) at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) has been presented in the article "A whole-body support pose taxonomy for multi-contact humanoid robot motions" published in Science Robotics (20 Dec. 2017).

The first press release featuring the humanoid robot ARMAR-6 was launched. The robot was developed at the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H²T) within the EU H2020 SecondHands research project.

Article in IEEE Spectrum 

Overview of press coverage

KIT offers this year several opportunities to pupils, who would like to carry out their BOGY (German: Berufs- und Studienorientierung am Gymnasium in Baden-Württemberg) internship in the field of information technologies. Here some Links with further information:

Infomatics BOGY

Robotics BOGY at H2T

Robotics BOGY at MINT Kolleg

Within the framework of the European Robotics Week 2017, the Intelligent Process Automation and Robotics Lab   and the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics open their doors to the public, respectively on November 21 and November 22, 2017. Registration is not required.

Further information (German only)

A colloquium in honor of Professor Heinz Wörn took place on October 20, 2017 in the Garden Hall of the Karlsruhe Palace, on the occasion of his retirement. High-ranking guests from academia and industry attended the colloquium, which offered a lively overview of Professor Wörn's successful career.

Further information (German only)

About 400 children attended the lecture “Mensch oder Maschine? Die Menschmaschine”, held by Professor Tamim Asfour on August 1, 2017 at the “KIT-Kinder-Uni 2017”. The young public listened with great interest to the latest developments in the field of humanoid robotics and participated actively to the lecture by answering questions and expressing opinions. Demos with the NAO humanoid robot and other toy robots rounded the lecture and were a true highlight for all children. The lecture is available online here.

The KIT Open Day 2017 at Campus North, on June 24, was a great success. KCIST contributed to the event, by entertaining the visitors with a varied program, ranging from humanoid robots, mini radars and a system for the automatic translation of lectures at KIT.

Official KIT press release

On March 15, 2017 Professor Alex Waibel (Interactive Systems Labs) was elected to the Leopoldina, one of the oldest academies of science in the world.  It is dedicated to the advancement of science for the benefit of humankind and to the goal of shaping a better future. The Leopoldina brings together outstanding scientists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many other countries.

Dr. Santiago Pagani from the Chair for Embedded Systems has been awarded the ACM “Paul Caspi Memorial Dissertation Award” from SIGBED (Special Interest Group Embedded Systems of ACM) for his PhD thesis entitled “Power, Energy, and Thermal Management for Clustered Manycores".

Robotics experts from leading universities in Germany will discuss at CeBIT in Hannover current trends, newest achievements and future opportunities of robotics in the 21st century with special focus on human-machine interaction. The symposium will take place on March 22, 2017 (Hall 6 Konferenzforum Future Talk and Convention Center hall A3).

The High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H²T) group released the KIT Motion-Language Dataset, an open large-scale dataset for linking human whole-body motion with natural language.

Link to the Paper 

Link to the Press Release of the Journal Publisher 

The KIT Center Information ▪ Systems ▪ Technologies (KCIST) presents itself to the Karlsruhe public on Wednesday, January 25th, 2017, 6:30 pm, in the Karlsruhe City Hall. KCIST researchers will give an overview of some innovative research activities at KIT in the area of "Big Data and artificial intelligence".

KIT-Reihe im Rathaus traf auf enorme Resonanz (German only)

Pictures of the event

Videos on DIVA

Professor Uwe D. Hanebeck (ISAS) has been elevated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to IEEE Fellow, effective January 1, 2017, for his "contributions to nonlinear estimation and control". IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation.