To show suitable information to humans is one of the big issues for ubiquitous computing, human computer interaction (HCI) and the emerging field of cyber-physical systems. It is necessary to connect the digital virtual-space -- the so-called cyber world -- with the physical human living-space, so t…

As we are striving for long term autonomy and lifelong learning, our systems generate terabytes of data. Besides processing this data online when it is generated, storing and analyzing the data later on is of equal importance. Furthermore, sharing the acquired data and the thereu…

Kolloquium

Kolloquium

In this talk, the goals of the recently started European Project FourByThree will be presented. After a brief description of the administrative data and the role of the DFKI in the project, an introduction to the area of physical human-robot interaction will be given in which we will see the methods…

Recently, the six-legged robot HECTOR was put into operation. This hexapod is characterized by its 18 elastic joint drives, a high level of sensorisation and a decentralized control strategy for walking. This presentation will introduce the hardware structure of the system which includes, amongst o…

Rehabilitation for post-stroke patients is a very difficult, time-consuming and exhausting task for both the patients and the therapists. Regaining control of the paralyzed upper limb is one of the key elements in classical treatments, since for many activities of daily living two functional upper l…

Current localization algorithms are prone to failure in demanding environments due to restrictions imposed by the commonly applied sensor techniques. For example, GPS-based localization fails in indoor environments or under water, vision-based sensors fail in difficult lightning conditions, etc. The…

Recently proposed algorithms for contextual policy search can be used to learn behavioral building blocks that generalize over a fixed set of task parameters even in complex robotic domains. In this talk, I will show how this can be useful for autonomous robots, summarize the state of the art, point…

Reconfigurable wheel-on-leg rovers provide an effective solution for addressing traversability problems in Martian analogue environments. Soft soil and step obstacles larger than a rover's wheel diameter are significant impediments that can be more easily overcome with an actively articulated mobili…