Research

Our roots lie at the TU Ilmenau. The spirit of research and discovery that we embraced there continues to guide us to this day. The development of our robotic systems integrates both practical applications and fundamental research. This not only results in innovative solutions but also in research projects and publications that document and advance our work.

Projects

The project aims to optimize the drive and battery of a robot platform.

The aim of the project is to design and develop an RFID robot for inventory management in warehouse environments.

The joint project aims to develop new drive concepts for Autonomous Mobile Robots a special modeling software.

As part of the project, target group orientated sales concepts are to be developed for the existing TORY and CARY products. The tasks of the funded person include the analysis of customer needs (from support/service) and the development of a target group specific communication system.Supported by the Free State of Thuringia and the European Social Fund Plus.

Together with the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg a mobile robot platform for autonomous inventory and localization was developed.

The project focuses on the development of a new drive system for mobile service robots, mechanical product adaptions and further developments of the robots SCITOS X3, CARY, TORY and STERYBOT as well as the scientific work organization with regard to the implementation and application of a new CAD data management.

The project is intended to support developments of electric and mechanical assemblies, to develop and implement new test concepts for assemblies as well as test benches for parallel burn-in tests of several assemblies.

Since October 2016, we continue to develop the robot from the ROREAS project in the ROGER project. More about the project on roger-projekt.de

Since June 2017, we have been developing components for a novel autonomous mobile service robot with a focus on industrial environments in the VABULEUS project. More about the project: TU Ilmenau website.

For the scalable service robotics applications TORY and SCITOS, risk assessments and the associated documents such as test reports and operating instructions are to be created. Furthermore, the project for these products will be followed by performance and monitoring examinations, the translation of technical documents and the introduction of a quality management system.

In accordance with the advisory guidelines of the Free State of Thuringia, the company receives funding to increase its performance and competitiveness through advice from independent business consultants – intensive advice and process support. The results and recommendations for action are recorded in a consultant report. The funding comes from the European Social Fund and the State of Thuringia.

Within the scope of the project, the main focus of activities is the development of project-related sales and marketing concepts. By working out market and target group-specific exploitation strategies, the service robotics applications should be able to be offered in a targeted manner to meet customer requirements.

Publications

Döring, N., Pöschl, S., Gross, H.-M., Bley, A., Martin, Ch., Böhme, H.-J.
User-Centered Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Shopping Robot.
Int. Journal of Social Robotics (JSR), vol. 7 (2015), pp. 203-225

 

Gross, H.-M., Debes, K., Einhorn, E., Müller, St., Scheidig, A., Weinrich, Ch., Bley, A., Martin, Ch.
Mobile Robotic Rehabilitation Assistant for Walking and Orientation Training of Stroke Patients: A Report on Work in Progress.
in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2014), San Diego, USA, pp. 1880-1887, IEEE 2014

 

Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., Volkhardt, M., Einhorn, E., Huijnen, C., van den Heuvel, H., van Berlo, A. , Bley, A., Gross, H.-M.
Realization and User Evaluation of a Companion Robot for People with Mild Cognitive Impairments.
in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Karlsruhe, Germany, pp. 1145-1151, IEEE 2013

 

Einhorn, E., Langner, T., Stricker, R., Martin, Ch., Gross, H.-M.
MIRA – Middleware for Robotic Applications.
in: Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Vilamoura, Portugal, pp. 2591-2598, IEEE 2012

 

Gross, H.-M., Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., Volkhardt, M., Einhorn, E., Bley, A., Langner, T., Merten, M., Huijnen, C., van den Heuvel, H., van Berlo, A.
Further Progress towards a Home Robot Companion for People with Mild Cognitive Impairment.
in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), Seoul, South Korea, pp. 637-644, IEEE 2012


Merten, M., Bley, A., Schröter, Ch., Gross, H.-M.
A Mobile Robot Platform for Socially Assistive Home-care Applications.
in: Proc. German Conference on Robotics (ROBOTIK), 2012, Munich, Germany, pp. 233-238, publisher VDE 2012

 

Pöschl, S., Döring, N., Gross, H.-M., Bley, A., Martin, Ch., Böhme, H.-J.
Roboter-gestützte Artikelsuche im Baumarkt.
Zeitschrift für Evaluation (ZfEv), vol. 10 (2011) 1, 99-132

 

Gross, H.-M., Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., Volkhardt, M., Einhorn, E., Bley, A., Martin, Ch., Langner, T., Merten, M.
Progress in Developing a Socially Assistive Mobile Home Robot Companion for the Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment.
in: Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), San Francisco, USA, pp. 2430-2437, IEEE Omnipress 2011

 

Gross, H.-M., Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., Volkhardt, M., Einhorn, E., Bley, A., Martin, Ch., Langner, T., Merten, M.
I’ll Keep an Eye on You: Home Robot Companion for Elderly People with Cognitive Impairment.
in: IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), Anchorage, USA, pp. 2481-2488, IEEE 2011

 

Martin, Ch., Steege, F.-F., Gross, H.-M.
Estimation of Pointing Poses for Visually Instructing Mobile Robots under Real-World Conditions.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), vol. 58 (2010) 2, pp. 174-185, Elsevier

 

Pöschl, S., Döring, N., Böhme, H.J., Martin, Ch.
Mensch-Roboter-Interaktion im Baumarkt. Formative Evaluation eines mobilen Shopping-Roboters.
Zeitschrift für Evaluation (ZfEv), vol. 8 (2009) 1, 27-58

 

Gross, H.-M., Böhme, H.-J., Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., König, A., Einhorn, E., Martin, Ch., Merten, M., Bley, A.
TOOMAS: Interactive Shopping Guide Robots in Everyday Use – Final Implementation and Experiences from Long-Term Field Trials.
in: Proc. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, USA, pp. 2005-2012, IEEE 2009

 

Stricker, R., Martin, Ch., Gross, H.-M.
Increasing the Robustness of 2D Active Appearance Models for Real-World Applications.
in: Proc. Int. Conf. on Computer Vision Systems (ICVS), Liege, LNCS 5815, pp. 364-373, Springer 2009

 

Pöschl, S., Döring, N. Böhme, H.J. & Martin, Ch.
Computergestützte Artikelsuche im Baumarkt – Formative Evaluation eines Artikelsuchsystems für mobile Shopping-Roboter.
Zeitschrift für Evaluation (ZfEv), vol. 7 (2008), S. 113-135

 

Gross, H.-M., Böhme, H.-J., Schröter, Ch., Müller, St., König, A., Martin, Ch., Merten, M., Bley, A.
ShopBot: Progress in Developing an Interactive Mobile Shopping Assistant for Everyday Use.
in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC), Singapore, pp. 3471-3478, IEEE 2008

 

Martin, Ch., Werner, U., Gross, H.-M.
A Real-time Facial Expression Recognition System based on Active Appearance Models using Gray Images and Edge Images.
in: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), Amsterdam, paper no. 299, 6 pages, IEEE

 

Richarz, J., Scheidig, A., Martin, Ch., Müller, St., Gross, H.-M.
A Monocular Pointing Pose Estimator for Gestural Instruction of a Mobile Robot.
International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems (IJARS), vol. 4, No. 1 (2007), pp. 139-150

 

Martin, Ch., Schaffernicht, E., Scheidig, A., Gross, H.-M.
Multi-Modal Sensor Fusion Using a Probabilistic Aggregation Scheme for People Detection and Tracking.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), vol. 54, (2006) 9, pp. 721-728, Elsevier ScienceDirect

 

Thrun, S., Martin, Ch., Yufeng Liu, Hähnel, D., Emery-Montemerlo, R., Chakrabarti, D. and Burgard, W.
A Real-Time Expectation Maximization Algorithm for Acquiring Multi-Planar Maps of Indoor Environments with Mobile Robots.
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (TRA), vol. 20 (2003), pp. 433-442