Location:

address: Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Technische Universität München Theresienstraβe 90, 80333 München
tel: +49 89 289 28396
fax: +49 89 289 28340
web: http://www.lsr.ei.tum.de

Description of participant

Technische Universität München is ranked the top academic and research institution in Germany consistently in several independent rankings in recent years. It provides an excellent environment (likely the best in Germany) by substantial funding from the Bavarian state government. One of the missions of the University is to boost interdisciplinary research between engineering, medicine, and humanities. The chair of the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering (Prof. Martin Buss), Technische Universität München, employs about 30 academic, technical, and administrative staff members; the department of electrical engineering at Technische Universität München has 24 professors and more than 200 staff members. The chair of control systems has broad experience in control of mechatronic and robotic systems, in particular complex robotic systems like humanoid walking machine, intelligent mobile robots with arms, multi-fingered robotic hands or complex kinaesthetic feedback systems as part of multi-modal systems for human-system interaction. Main research fields are control, human-system-interaction, robotics, haptics, mechatronics, control theory, and multi-modal telepresence systems.

Key researchers

Martin BUSS (*1965) is currently full professor (since June 2003), chair for control systems, and director of the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. He received the diploma engineer degree in Electrical Engineering in 1990 from the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, and the Doctor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1994. In 1988 he was a research student at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan, for one year. As a postdoctoral researcher he stayed with the Department of Systems Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, in 1994/5. From 1995-2000 he has been senior research assistant and lecturer at the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technical University Munich, Germany where he finished his habilitation dissertation in the year 2000. From 2000-2003 he was a full professor and head of the Control Systems Group, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany. His research interests include automatic control, mechatronics, robotics, intelligent control, multi-modal human-system interfaces, haptic (kinaesthetic, tactile, temperature) systems, medical haptic VR applications, optimization, nonlinear and hybrid discrete-continuous systems.

Dirk WOLLHERR (*1975) is currently a postdoctoral researcher (since July 2005) at the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. He received the diploma engineer degree in Electrical Engineering in 2000 and the Doctor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering in 2005 from the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. From 2001-2004 he has been research assistant at the Control Systems Group, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. In 2004 he has been granted a research fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) at the Yoshihiko-Nakamura-Lab, The University of Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include automatic control, robotics, humanoid walking, human-robot interaction, and nonlinear control.

Andrea BAUER (*1981) is currently a  research assistant (since December 2006) at the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. She received the diploma engineer degree in Electrical Engineering in 2006 from the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. Her research interests include human-robot collaboration,  multi-modal human-system interfaces, intention estimation, and automatic control.

Role of partner

Partner TUM will bring in its experience in haptic human-machine interaction and in psychophysical studies aiming at an improved and theoretically well founded collaboration of humans and robotic agents.