IAI-Head Professor Michael Beetz awarded prestigious ERC Advanced Grant

We are happy to share the success of the head of our Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Professor Michael Beetz, who has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his scientific work.

The ERC Advanced Grant recognises Michael Beetz as an outstanding leader with a track record of ground-breaking research achievements his field. The Grant is a special award intended to enable research work that comes with increased risks but also great promises for tackling societal challenges.

The aim of Beetz‘ new project Future-oriented cognitive Action Modelling Engine (FAME) is to design and implement a hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning framework for prospective reasoning, using open manipulation task learning as a benchmark challenge. This type of learning is intended to facilitate the development of highly versatile, so-called general-purpose robotic agents that can flexibly perform manipulation tasks on any object for any purpose.

The results of this project are expected to have significant impact on the fields of AI and robotics by expanding the cognitive capabilities of robots to learn and reason about how to perform actions and why. With the knowledge gained from this framework, AI-based robots will eventually be able to operate more autonomously to assist us in our daily lives.

Beetz’ research thus comes with far-reaching benefits and implications: In the context of demographic change, for example, it holds great potential for enabling the physically disabled to live independently in their own homes for longer.

In addition to the symbolic recognition of Beetz' achievements, obtaining the ERC Advanced Grant also supports their research in a more tangible way. For a period of five years, Beetz’ frontier research will be funded with 2.5 million euros.

We are highly pleased about this award for Professor Beetz and congratulate him on his success.