Autonomous Driving & Intelligent Robots

In this area, we are working on cognitive driver assistance systems that create the most comprehensive possible understanding of the situation by means of visual and auditory detection of the environment and the driver. In addition to the sensory area, our research is also being conducted on other topics in mobile robotics that are necessary for driver assistance systems and automated driving. These include visual localization and navigation, situation analysis and trajectory planning. But also the driver takes on an important role: With driver observation and analysis of driving behavior, driver intention and state as well as cooperation between road users are the subject of our research.

In autonomous driving (in this case, an autonomous overtaking maneuver), a large number of computers, sensors and actuators must work together to successfully solve the numerous difficulties that arise.

The term “autonomous driving” refers to the independent movement of vehicles or mobile robots. The vehicle first must recognize its surrounding area and has to understand the current situation before a future motion sequence (trajectory) can be planned and executed.

Research on autonomous driving is also being conducted at the Department of Control Methods and Robotics at the TU Darmstadt. Our focus includes risk assessment of the vehicle and its environment, classification of the current traffic situation, trajectory planning of the autonomous vehicle as well as detection and localization of warning signals.

Robots assist humans during difficult medical procedures.

Robotics

Robotics is a very innovative field of research that promises great progress in the future. The department is working on various areas in this field:

On the one hand, a robot represents a complex nonlinear system that can be controlled by using methods of nonlinear automatic control systems. Methods from the lecture System Dynamics and Automatic Control Systems III (SDACS 3) can be applied for example. On the other hand the interaction between humans and robots and between different robots is one area we are working on. In this context, both low-level control and high-level planning of the motion sequences are relevant.