How does thinking work? (How) can we instruct machines to think? And how can we use our knowledge to make machines more useful for people?
After more than 15 years of university-based research and teaching in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics and human-machine interaction, I wanted to bring my knowledge to use. I am proud to develop new products and services as part of the Intiuty Media Lab. Alongside I go on pursuing my research and accept jobs as a freelancer.
I am currently mostly pondering about the abililty of humans to make decisions in everyday life. I use results from psychology and behavioral economics to implement computational decision processes that resemble those of humans. The goal is not only to get better automatic responses, but also to facilitate the interaction between people and machines. The same mechanisms are interesting for defining organizational processes.
Curriculum Vitae
Professional Experience
since 2018
since 2018
Independent Scientist
2012 – 2018
Assistant professor, Universität Tübingen
2008 – 2012
Junior research group leader, TU München
2007 – 2008
Strategy consultant, Booz & Co. (now: strategy&)
2003 – 2007
Doctoral researcher, TU München
Education
2017
Positive final evaluation of assistant professorship (asserting the ability and aptitude necessary for filling a professorship), Universität Tübingen
2008
Doctorate in Informatics, TU München
Grade: summa cum laude
Grade: summa cum laude
2003
Diploma of Informatics, TU München
passed with distinction
passed with distinction
Awards
- Adjunct member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, as a member of the Young Scolar's Programme (2012-2018)
- Carl-von-Linde Junior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study of TU München (2010-2012)
- Junior research group leader in the cluster of excellence Cognition for Technical Systems, TU München (2009-2012)
Talks and Training
October 2019
The Technology in Autonomous Cars: A Focus on the Present, Ethics and Legislation of Autonomous Systems, Würzburg
November 2018
Can Robots Replace Caregivers? An Insight into the State of Robot Research, Lebensphasenhaus Tübingen
August 2017
The RenAIssance: Brave New World, European Forum Alpbach 2017, 6-day course, with Tarek Besold
March 2017
Really Bad Science, Interdisciplinary College, Rainbow Course
July 2015
Usable Technology: from People, for People, Kärcher Future Day
2012, 2013, 2017
Artificial Intelligence, Interdisciplinary College, introductory course (4 sessions)
2012 – 2018
Teaching in my time an assistant professor
- Lectures
- User Interface Design
- Advanced Artificial Intelligence
- Dialog Systems
- Basics of Human-Computer Interaction
- Usability Engineering
- Seminars
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Human-Robot Interaktion
2009 – 2012
Teaching assignment for lecture Artificial Intelligence, Hochschule Deggendorf
Projects
since 2019
Heuristic categorization
since 2018
Cognitive plausibility of story-based motion representation, with Frank Papenmeier (Psychology, University of Tübingen) und Juan Purcalla (Computer Science, University of Tübingen)
2017 – 2018
Prevention for Artificial Ventilation Patients by Computationally Supported Feedback for Intensive Care, joint R&D project of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
2014 – 2018
Prototype-based Knowledge Representation for Everyday Objects, Funding program for assistant professors of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg
2012 – 2018
Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Young Scholar's Programme of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
2013 – 2016
Model-based Opportunistic Robot Planning for Human-robot Collaboration (MORPH), German Research Foundation
2010 – 2013
Reasoning about Human Behavior Patterns, TUM Institute for Advanced Study
2009 – 2012
Planning for Adaptive Robot Assistance, Cluster of Excellence Cognition for Technical Systems
Publications
Suche. In: Handbuch der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Ed: Günther Görz, Ute Schmid, Tanya Braun, 6th edition. De Gruyter. Chap. 3. 2021.
MyPDDL: Tools for Efficiently Creating PDDL Domains and Problems. In: Knowledge Engineering Tools and Techniques for AI Planning. Ed: Mauro Vallati, Diane Kitchin. Springer. Chap. 4. 2020.
Shakey Ever After? Questioning Tacit Assumptions in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Künstliche Intelligenz, 33(4), pp. 423 – 428, 2019. [pdf from HAL]
A Unifying Computational Model of Decision Making. Cognitive Processing, 20(2), pp. 243 – 259, 2019. [pdf from HAL]
Human Understanding of Robot Motion: The Role of Velocity and Orientation. International Journal of Social Robotics, 11(1), pp. 75 – 88, 2019. [pdf from HAL]
Categorization in Real-World Tasks. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems, pp. 37 – 54. 2019. (Tech. Rep. No. COLAB2-TR-4) [pdf from HAL]
Human-Like Prototypes Representing Categories of a Real-World Setup. In: 8. Interdisziplinärer Workshop Kognitive Systeme, pp. 20 – 21. DuEPublico, Duisburg, Germany, 2019.
Motion Categorisation: Representing Velocity Qualitatively. Cognitive Systems Research, 52, pp. 117 – 131, 2018. [pdf from HAL]
Qualitative Reasoning with Story-Based Motion Representations: Inverse and Composition Approaches. In: 31st International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, co-located at Int'l Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'18). Stockholm, Sweden, 2018. [pdf from HAL]
Extending Qualitative Representations of Motion. In: 14th biannual conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science (KogWis). Darmstadt, Germany, 2018.
Lessons from Human Problem Solving for Cognitive Systems Research. Advances in Cognitive Systems, 5, pp. 13 – 24, 2017.
Interview with Prof. Dr. Daniel Buhr, Professor for Policy Analysis and Political Economy at the University of Tübingen. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 305 – 307, 2017.
Editorial to Special Issue on Smart Environments. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 227 – 229, 2017.
Smart Environments: What is it and why should we care?. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 231 – 237, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Indoor Localisation with Beacons for a User-Friendly Mobile Tour Guide. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 239 – 248, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Explain to whom? Putting the User in the Center of Explainable AI. In: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Comprehensibility and Explanation in AI and ML 2017, co-located with 16th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2017). Bari, Italy, 2017. (invited paper) [pdf from HAL]
A Modular Approach of Decision-Making in the Context of Robot Navigation in Domestic Environments. In: 3rd Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence (GCAI), pp. 134 – 147. Miami, Fl., USA, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Using Stories to Create Qualitative Representations of Motion. In: Problem-solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning Symposium (ProSocrates). Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, Germany, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Bewegungserkennung mit Wearables für Embodied Trainings in Serious Games. In: Mensch und Computer 2017 — Tagungsband, pp. 259 – 262. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Design and Evaluation of a User Interface to Facilitate Cardiac Monitoring. In: Mensch und Computer 2017 — Tagungsband, pp. 285 – 288. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Human-like Prototypes for Psychologically Inspired Knowledge Representation. In: Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). Moscow, Russia, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Predictive Ridesharing based on Personal Mobility Patterns. In: Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV). 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Sensor Fusion for Semantic Place Labeling. In: International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS). 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Prosodiya — A Mobile Game for German Dyslexic Children. In: Games and Learning Alliance conference (GALA 2017). Lisbon, Portugal, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Modelling human problem solving with data from an online game. Cognitive Processing, 17(4), pp. 415 – 428, 2016. [pdf from HAL]
Prototype-based Knowledge Representation for an Improved Human-robot Interaction. Kognitive Systeme, 2015(2) 2016. [pdf from HAL]
Heuristic Decision-Making for Human-aware Navigation in Domestic Environments. In: 2nd Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence (GCAI), pp. 200 – 213. Berlin, Germany, 2016. [pdf from HAL]
A Short-Term Memory for Deliberative Agents in Everyday Environments. In: 2nd Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence (GCAI), pp. 187 – 199. Berlin, Germany, 2016. [pdf from HAL]
Leveraging Qualitative Reasoning to Learning Manipulation Tasks. Robotics, 4(3), pp. 253 – 283, 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Qualitative Spatial Reasoning for Boosting Learning-Based Robotics. In: Workshop Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion, in conjunction with International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Prototype-based Knowledge Representation of Everyday Objects. In: 4. Interdisziplinärer Workshop Kognitive Systeme. 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Acquisition and Use of Mobility Habits for Personal Assistants. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Social acceptability of opportunistic behaviour of an assistant robot in human-robot everyday collaboration. In: Workshop ``Planen, Scheduling und Konfigurieren, Entwerfen'', held in conjunction with German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Stuttgart, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Planning in the Wild: Modeling Tools for PDDL. In: 37th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI). Stuttgart, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Low Cost Activity Recognition Using Depth Cameras and Context Dependent Spatial Regions. In: Workshop on Autonomous Robots and Multirobot Systems (ARMS), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). Paris, France, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Low Cost Activity Recognition Using Depth Cameras and Context Dependent Spatial Regions. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Extended Abstract. 2014. [pdf from HAL]
A Human Morning Routine Dataset. In: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). Paris, France, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Goal-Predictability vs. Trajectory-Predictability — Which Legibility Factor Counts. In: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI late breaking report). Bielefeld, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Evaluating directional cost models in navigation. In: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Bielefeld, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Heuristic Problem Solving with Abstract Knowledge in the Context of the Travelling Salesperson Problem. 2014. (unpublished article) [pdf from HAL]
Human-Robot Interaction. In: Computation for Humanity: Information Technology to Advance Society. Ed: Justyna Zander, Pieter Mosterman. CRC Press. Chap. 8, pp. 177 – 204. 2013.
Planen. In: Handbuch der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Ed: Günther Görz, Josef Schneeberger, Ute Schmid, 5th edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Chap. 10. 2013.
Human-Aware Robot Navigation: A Survey. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61(12), pp. 1726 – 1743, 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Strategies of locomotor collision avoidance. Gait & Posture, 37(3), pp. 385 – 390, 2013. [pdf from HAL]
An Expectations Framework for Domestic Robot Assistants. In: Second Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Towards Legible Robot Navigation — How to Increase the Intend Expressiveness of Robot Navigation Behavior. In: International Conference on Social Robotics — Workshop Embodied Communication of Goals and Intentions. 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Simultaneous Plan Recognition and Monitoring (SPRAM) for Robot Assistants. In: Workshop on Human Robot Collaboration, held in conjunction with Robotics Science and Systems (RSS). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Social Navigation — Identifying Robot Navigation Patterns in a Path Crossing Scenario. In: International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Be a Robot! Robot Navigation Patterns in a Path Crossing Scenario. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI late breaking report). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Welche Rolle spielt Abstraktion für intelligentes Verhalten?. Akademie Aktuell, 4, pp. 48 – 49, 2012.
Integration von Programmieren und Lernen in eine Steuerungssprache für autonome Roboter. KI - Künstliche Intelligenz, 26(1), pp. 79 – 82, 2012. (Dissertationen und Habilitationen) [pdf from HAL]
Hierarchical Knowledge for Heuristic Problem Solving — A Case Study on the Traveling Salesperson Problem. In: First Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Acquisition and Use of Transferable, Spatio-Temporal Plan Representations for Human-Robot Interaction. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Influence of Legibility on Perceived Safety in a Virtual Human-Robot Path Crossing Task. In: 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man 2012). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Increasing Perceived Value Between Human and Robots — Measuring Legibility in Human Aware Navigation. In: IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Legible Robot Navigation in the Proximity of Moving Humans. In: IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Human-Robot Interaction in the MORSE Simulator. In: Proceedings of the 2012 Human-Robot Interaction Conference (HRI late breaking report). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Humanlike Problem Solving in the Context of the Traveling Salesperson Problem. In: AAAI Fall Symposium on Advances in Cognitive Systems. AAAI Press, 2011. [pdf from HAL]
Towards a Legibility Metric: How to Measure the Perceived Value of a Robot. In: International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR), work in progress track. 2011. [pdf from HAL]
Towards Expectation-based Failure Recognition for Human Robot Interaction. In: 22nd International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis, Special Track on Open Problem Descriptions. 2011. [pdf from HAL]
Special Issue on Cognition for Technical Systems. Künstliche Intelligenz, 24(4), pp. 283 – 286, 2010.
Plan-based Control of Joint Human-Robot Activities. Künstliche Intelligenz, 24(3), pp. 223 – 231, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Towards Opportunistic Action Selection in Human-Robot Cooperation. In: 33rd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Springer, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
A Testbed for Adaptive Human-Robot Collaboration. In: 33rd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Springer, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Learning Ability Models for Human-Robot Collaboration. In: Workshop on Learning for Human-Robot Interaction Modeling at Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS). 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Exploiting Human Cooperation in Human-Centered Robot Navigation. In: IEEE International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man). 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Dynamic Generation and Execution of Human Aware Navigation Plans. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Be a Robot — A Study on Everyday Activities Performed in Real and Virtual Worlds. Tech. rep. TUM-I1006. Technische Universität München, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Multi Joint Action in CoTeSys — Setup and Challenges. Tech. rep. CoTeSys-TR-10-01. CoTeSys Cluster of Excelence: Technische Universität München & Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2010.
Robot Learning Language — Integrating Programming and Learning for Cognitive Systems. Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal, 57(9), pp. 943 – 954, 2009. [pdf from HAL]
An Integrated Planning and Learning Framework for Human-Robot Interaction. In: 4th Workshop on Planning and Plan Execution for Real-World Systems (held in conjuction with ICAPS 09). 2009. [pdf from HAL]
Integration of Programming and Learning in a Control Language for Autonomous Robots Performing Everyday Activities. PhD Thesis. Technische Universität München, 2008. [pdf from HAL]
Training on the Job — Collecting Experience with Hierarchical Hybrid Automata. In: Proceedings of the 30th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI-2007), pp. 473 – 476. 2007. [pdf from HAL]
Transformational Planning for Everyday Activity. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'07), pp. 248 – 255. 2007. [pdf from HAL]
The Assistive Kitchen — A Demonstration Scenario for Cognitive Technical Systems. In: Proceedings of the 4th COE Workshop on Human
Adaptive Mechatronics (HAM). 2007. [pdf from HAL]
Towards High-performance Robot Plans with Grounded Action Models: Integrating Learning Mechanisms into Robot Control Languages. In: ICAPS Doctoral Consortium. 2005. [pdf from HAL]
Combining Learning and Programming for High-Performance Robot Controllers. In: Tagungsband Autonome Mobile Systeme 2005. Springer Verlag, 2005. [pdf from HAL]
Making Robot Learning Controllable: A Case Study in Robot Navigation. In: Proceedings of the ICAPS Workshop on Plan Execution: A Reality Check. 2005. [pdf from HAL]
Object-oriented Model-based Extensions of Robot Control Languages. In: 27th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. 2004. [pdf from HAL]
RPL-LEARN: Extending an Autonomous Robot Control Language to Perform Experience-based Learning. In: 3rd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS). 2004. [pdf from HAL]
Autonomous Robot Controllers Capable of Acquiring Repertoires of Complex Skills. In: RoboCup International Symposium 2003. 2003. [pdf from HAL]