How does thinking work? And 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.

Foto

Curriculum Vitae

Professional Experience

since 2018Intuity Media Lab
since 2018Independent Scientist
2012 - 2018Assistant professor, Universität Tübingen
2008 - 2012Junior research group leader, TU München
2007 - 2008Strategy consultant, Booz & Co. (jetzt: strategy&)
2003 - 2007Doctoral researcher, TU München

Education

2017Positive final evaluation of assistant professorship (asserting the ability and aptitude necessary for filling a professorship), Universität Tübingen
2008Doctorate in Informatics, TU München
Grade: summa cum laude
2003Diploma of Informatics, TU München
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 2019The Technology in Autonomous Cars: A Focus on the Present, Ethics and Legislation of Autonomous Systems, Würzburg
November 2018Can Robots Replace Caregivers? An Insight into the State of Robot Research, Lebensphasenhaus Tübingen
August 2017The RenAIssance: Brave New World, European Forum Alpbach 2017, 6-day course, with Tarek Besold
March 2017Really Bad Science, Interdisciplinary College, Rainbow Course
July 2015Usable Technology: from People, for People, Kärcher Zukunftstag
2012, 2013, 2017Artificial 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 2019Heuristic categorization
since 2018Cognitive plausibility of story-based motion representation, with Frank Papenmeier (Psychology, University of Tübingen) und Juan Purcalla (Computer Science, University of Tübingen)
2017 - 2018Prevention for Artificial Ventilation Patients by Computationally Supported Feedback for Intensive Care, joint R&D project of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
2014 - 2018Prototype-based Knowledge Representation for Everyday Objects, Funding program for assistant professors of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg
2012 - 2018Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Young Scholar's Programme of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
2013 - 2016Model-based Opportunistic Robot Planning for Human-robot Collaboration (MORPH), German Research Foundation
2010 - 2013Reasoning about Human Behavior Patterns, TUM Institute for Advanced Study
2009 - 2012Planning for Adaptive Robot Assistance, Cluster of Excellence Cognition for Technical Systems

Publications

Volker Strobel, Alexandra Kirsch. 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.
Alexandra Kirsch. Shakey Ever After? Questioning Tacit Assumptions in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Künstliche Intelligenz, 33(4), pp. 423 – 428, 2019. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. A Unifying Computational Model of Decision Making. Cognitive Processing, 20(2), pp. 243 – 259, 2019. [pdf from HAL]
Frank Papenmeier, Meike Uhrig, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alisa Volkert, Jona Schröder, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Jona Schröder, Alisa Volkert, Sophie Hornuff, Alexandra Kirsch. Human-Like Prototypes Representing Categories of a Real-World Setup. In: 8. Interdisziplinärer Workshop Kognitive Systeme, pp. 20 – 21. DuEPublico, Duisburg, Germany, 2019.
Juan Purcalla Arrufi, Alexandra Kirsch. Motion Categorisation: Representing Velocity Qualitatively. Cognitive Systems Research, 52, pp. 117 – 131, 2018. [pdf from HAL]
Juan Purcalla Arrufi, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Juan Purcalla Arrufi, Alexandra Kirsch. Extending Qualitative Representations of Motion. In: 14th biannual conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science (KogWis). Darmstadt, Germany, 2018.
Alexandra Kirsch. Lessons from Human Problem Solving for Cognitive Systems Research. Advances in Cognitive Systems, 5, pp. 13 – 24, 2017.
Alexandra Kirsch. 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.
Diedrich Wolter, Alexandra Kirsch. Editorial to Special Issue on Smart Environments. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 227 – 229, 2017.
Diedrich Wolter, Alexandra Kirsch. Smart Environments: What is it and why should we care?. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 231 – 237, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Tobias Kaulich, Thomas Heine, Alexandra Kirsch. Indoor Localisation with Beacons for a User-Friendly Mobile Tour Guide. Künstliche Intelligenz, 31(3), pp. 239 – 248, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Juan Purcalla Arrufi, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Heiko Holz, Benedikt Beuttler, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Christina Aures, Christian Beuter, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alisa Volkert, Stefanie Müller, Alexandra Kirsch. Human-like Prototypes for Psychologically Inspired Knowledge Representation. In: Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). Moscow, Russia, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Roman Roor, Michael Karg, Andy Liao, Wenhui Lei, Alexandra Kirsch. Predictive Ridesharing based on Personal Mobility Patterns. In: Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV). 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Roman Roor, Jonas Hess, Matteo Saveriano, Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. Sensor Fusion for Semantic Place Labeling. In: International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS). 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Heiko Holz, Katharina Brandelik, Jochen Brandelik, Benedikt Beuttler, Alexandra Kirsch, Jürgen Heller, Detmar Meurers. Prosodiya — A Mobile Game for German Dyslexic Children. In: Games and Learning Alliance conference (GALA 2017). Lisbon, Portugal, 2017. [pdf from HAL]
Tim Rach, Alexandra Kirsch. Modelling human problem solving with data from an online game. Cognitive Processing, 17(4), pp. 415 – 428, 2016. [pdf from HAL]
Alisa Volkert, Alexandra Kirsch. Prototype-based Knowledge Representation for an Improved Human-robot Interaction. Kognitive Systeme, 2015(2) 2016. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Ivo Chichkov, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Diedrich Wolter, Alexandra Kirsch. Leveraging Qualitative Reasoning to Learning Manipulation Tasks. Robotics, 4(3), pp. 253 – 283, 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Diedrich Wolter, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alisa Volkert, Alexandra Kirsch. Prototype-based Knowledge Representation of Everyday Objects. In: 4. Interdisziplinärer Workshop Kognitive Systeme. 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Lukas Nack, Michael Karg, Roman Roor, Olga Birth, Alexandra Kirsch. Acquisition and Use of Mobility Habits for Personal Assistants. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). 2015. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. Daumenregeln für Mensch und Roboter. Akademie Aktuell, 1, pp. 60 – 61, 2014.
Nataliia Kushnirenko, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Volker Strobel, Alexandra Kirsch. Planning in the Wild: Modeling Tools for PDDL. In: 37th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI). Stuttgart, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. A Human Morning Routine Dataset. In: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). Paris, France, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Thibault Kruse, Alexandra Kirsch, Rachid Alami, Harmish Khambaitha. Evaluating directional cost models in navigation. In: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Bielefeld, Germany, 2014. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. Heuristic Problem Solving with Abstract Knowledge in the Context of the Travelling Salesperson Problem. 2014. (unpublished article) [pdf from HAL]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Alexandra Kirsch. Legibility of Robot Behavior : A Literature Review . 2014. (unpublished article) [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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.
Alexandra Kirsch, Josef Schneeberger. Planen. In: Handbuch der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Ed: Günther Görz, Josef Schneeberger, Ute Schmid, 5 th edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Chap. 10. 2013.
Thibault Kruse, Amit Kumar Pandey, Rachid Alami, Alexandra Kirsch. Human-Aware Robot Navigation: A Survey. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61(12), pp. 1726 – 1743, 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Patrizia Basili, Murat Saglam, Thibault Kruse, Markus Huber, Alexandra Kirsch, Stefan Glasauer. Strategies of locomotor collision avoidance. Gait & Posture, 37(3), pp. 385 – 390, 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. An Expectations Framework for Domestic Robot Assistants. In: Second Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Annika Peters, Sascha Griffiths, Alexandra Kirsch. Social Navigation — Identifying Robot Navigation Patterns in a Path Crossing Scenario. In: International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR). 2013. [pdf from HAL]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Annika Peters, Sascha Griffiths, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. Welche Rolle spielt Abstraktion für intelligentes Verhalten?. Akademie Aktuell, 4, pp. 48 – 49, 2012.
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Tamara Lorenz, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Tamara Lorenz, Michael Karg, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Thibault Kruse, Patrizia Basili, Stefan Glasauer, Alexandra Kirsch. Legible Robot Navigation in the Proximity of Moving Humans. In: IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Séverin Lemaignan, Gilberto Echeverria, Michael Karg, Jim Mainprice, Alexandra Kirsch, Rachid Alami. Human-Robot Interaction in the MORSE Simulator. In: Proceedings of the 2012 Human-Robot Interaction Conference (HRI late breaking report). 2012. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Christina Lichtenthäler, Tamara Lorenz, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Karg, Martin Sachenbacher, Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
Michael Beetz, Alexandra Kirsch. Special Issue on Cognition for Technical Systems. Künstliche Intelligenz, 24(4), pp. 283 – 286, 2010.
Alexandra Kirsch, Thibault Kruse, E. Akin Sisbot, Rachid Alami, Martin Lawitzky, Drazen Brscic, Sandra Hirche, Patrizia Basili, Stefan Glasauer. Plan-based Control of Joint Human-Robot Activities. Künstliche Intelligenz, 24(3), pp. 223 – 231, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Thibault Kruse, Alexandra Kirsch. Towards Opportunistic Action Selection in Human-Robot Cooperation. In: 33rd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Springer, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Yuxiang Chen. A Testbed for Adaptive Human-Robot Collaboration. In: 33rd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Springer, 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Fan Cheng. 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]
Thibault Kruse, Alexandra Kirsch, E. Akin Sisbot, Rachid Alami. Exploiting Human Cooperation in Human-Centered Robot Navigation. In: IEEE International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man). 2010. [pdf from HAL]
Thibault Kruse, Alexandra Kirsch, E. Akin Sisbot, Rachid Alami. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. 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]
D. Brscic, M. Eggers, F. Rohrmüller, O. Kourakos, S. Sosnowski, D. Althoff, M. Lawitzky, A. Mörtl, M. Rambow, V. Koropouli, J.R. Medina Hern'andez, X. Zang, W. Wang, D. Wollherr, K. Kühnlenz, C. Mayer, T. Kruse, A. Kirsch, J. Blume, A. Bannat, T. Rehrl, F. Wallhoff, T. Lorenz, P. Basili, C. Lenz, T. Röder, G. Panin, W. Maier, S. Hirche, M. Buss, M. Beetz, B. Radig, A. Schubö, S. Glasauer, A. Knoll, E. Steinbach. 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.
Alexandra Kirsch. Robot Learning Language — Integrating Programming and Learning for Cognitive Systems. Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal, 57(9), pp. 943 – 954, 2009. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Thibault Kruse, Lorenz Mösenlechner. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. Integration of Programming and Learning in a Control Language for Autonomous Robots Performing Everyday Activities. PhD Thesis. Technische Universität München, 2008. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Michael Beetz. 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]
Armin Müller, Alexandra Kirsch, Michael Beetz. 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]
Michael Beetz, Jan Bandouch, Alexandra Kirsch, Alexis Maldonado, Armin Müller, Radu Bogdan Rusu. 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]
Alexandra Kirsch. Towards High-performance Robot Plans with Grounded Action Models: Integrating Learning Mechanisms into Robot Control Languages. In: ICAPS Doctoral Consortium. 2005. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Michael Beetz. Combining Learning and Programming for High-Performance Robot Controllers. In: Tagungsband Autonome Mobile Systeme 2005. Springer Verlag, 2005. [pdf from HAL]
Alexandra Kirsch, Michael Schweitzer, Michael Beetz. 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]
Armin Müller, Alexandra Kirsch, Michael Beetz. Object-oriented Model-based Extensions of Robot Control Languages. In: 27th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. 2004. [pdf from HAL]
Michael Beetz, Alexandra Kirsch, Armin Müller. 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]
Freek Stulp, Alexandra Kirsch, Suat Gedikli, Michael Beetz. AGILO RoboCuppers 2004. In: RoboCup International Symposium 2004. 2004. [pdf from HAL]
Michael Beetz, Freek Stulp, Alexandra Kirsch, Armin Müller, Sebastian Buck. Autonomous Robot Controllers Capable of Acquiring Repertoires of Complex Skills. In: RoboCup International Symposium 2003. 2003. [pdf from HAL]