Die Bremer Universitäts-Gespräche 2016 lead by Prof. Michael Beetz, PhD and Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk

Since 1988 the annual Bremer Universitäts-Gespräche is organized by the Wolfgang-Ritter-Stiftung, the University of Bremen and the Unifreunde.

“Cognition-enabled Robotics: Democratising a Disruptive Technology” was the theme discussed this year. The event gathered together renowned researchers in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

The reception of the event took place in the laboratory of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence from University of Bremen with live demonstrations on robots and virtual reality and poster session for the other software systems developed here.

The event continued with the talks of the invited researchers. Prof. Dr. Yiannis Aloimonos from The University of Maryland presented an overview of grammar of actions. Digital innovation platforms for robotics were discussed by Prof. David Lane from Heriot Watt University. Prof. Gordon Cheng from Technical University of Munich discussed the robots in the age of innovation. Memory systems for robotic agents was the subject addressed by Prof. Tony Belpaeme from Plymouth University. Prof. Gregory O’Hare, PhD from University College Dublin discussed the autonomous robots and intelligent environments. The robots co-workers were the subject of the talk of Prof. Dr. Alin Albu-Schaeffer from Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of DLR. Prof. Dr. Markus Vincze from the Technical University of Vienna discussed the available open source libraries for robot perception. The challenges imposed by robot-centred knowledge representation were addressed by Prof. Dr. Herman Bruyninckx from the University of Leuven. Dr.-Ing. Georg von Wichert from Siemens AG and Dr.-Ing. Amos Albert from Bosch Deepfield Robotics were discussing the democratising a disruptive technology.

The discussions were moderated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Scholz-Reiter, the rector of the University of Bremen, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tanja Schultz and Prof. Dr. Rainer Malaka professors at University of Bremen and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Katja Windt, the rector of the Jacobs University Bremen and Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk professor at the Jacobs University Bremen and Dr. Uwe Haass from RoboConsult.

The opening and welcoming of the event were given by Prof. Dr. Eva Quante-Brandt from Minister for Health, Science and Consumer Protection of Bremen respectively Prof. Dr. Helge Bernd von Ahsen from Wolfgang-Ritter-Stiftung.

The entire event was coordinated by Prof. Michael Beetz, PhD from the University of Bremen and Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk from the Jacobs University Bremen.