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Abstract:
Our brain is constantly processing a vast amount of sensory and intrinsic information in order to understand and interact with the world around us. In my department at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in T�bingenand also in my research group in the Biological Cybernetics Lab at Korea University we aim to best model human perception and action and to test these models to predict human action for example in the context of driving and flying. To this end, we use systems and control theory, computer vision, and psychophysical techniques while conducting experiments with the most advanced state of the art motion simulators. I will present two examples to illustrate our research philosophy, the first in the area of Telepresence and the second about the enabling technologies of futuristic transportations systems: (1) An ideal telepresence system should enable the user to perceive and act on the remote environment as if sensed directly. In this context, we study new ways to interface human operators and teams of autonomous remote robots in a shared bilateral control architecture. (2) A novel framework to overcome the congestion problems with current ground-based transportation is a personal air transport system (PATS). In the myCopter project (www.mycopter.eu) we study together with other European partners the enabling technologies for traveling between homes and working places, and for flying in swarms at low altitude in urban environments. All our efforts are guided by the accepted vision that in the future humans and machines will seamlessly cooperate in shared or remote spaces, thus becoming an integral part of our daily life. For instance, robots or vehicles should be able to autonomously reason about their remote environment, i.e., to possess a significant level of autonomy in order to perform local tasks and take decisions.
