Björn Hein

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Björn Hein studied electrical engineering with a focus on control theory and received his PhD in 2003 concerning automatic collision-free path planning at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Since 2002 he has been team leader of the Intelligent Industrial Robots (IIROB) research group at the IPR at KIT. May 2010 he finished his post-doctoral lecture qualification for computer science with stress on human-robot-interaction. From 2012 to 2018 he was holder of a Shared-Professorship at KIT with the topic of interaction technologies for robotic systems. Since October 2018 he is a full professor at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Science (HSKA) in the field of “Intelligent Production and Cloud-Robotics”.

He received two awards for research and transfer of results between academia and industry: 2006 – Invention and Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics and Automation for a collision avoidance system for industrial robots in conjunction with KUKA, 2010 – Walter Reis Innovation Award for Robotics for automatic collision-free path planning in a robot based production cell. He was part of one of the three finalists in the 2015 Invention and Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics and Automation with the topic of online collision-free optimal path planning and synchronization of multiple robots.

His research focus comprises: algorithms for collision free, motion planning and path optimization, methods for intuitive and automatic online programming of robots, human-robot interaction and multi-modal and semi-automatic tele-control of robots. In the context of the Cloud-Robotics-Lab established in 2018 he focuses on providing above mentioned algorithms in a coordinated way to the shop-floor using cloud-inspired technologies.

New ways how to simplify and optimize human-robot collaboration

The talk will present concepts and insights about technologies developed in multiple research projects addressing different aspect in human-robot collaboration. There will be information, how safety in robotized warehouses could be achieved (http://www.safelog-project.eu) and how humans can intuitively interact with the system. Sensor technology will be explained, that allows robots to sense the close proximity of humans and to adapt their behavior correspondingly, e.g. to slow down and to optimize speed in human-robot collaboration. AI based algorithms allow to differentiate with this sensor technology between different materials, e.g. to differentiate between a human hand or just objects. Automatic path planning and AI based algorithms will be shown that drastically simplify and speed up programming of robots paving the way for new flexible production scenarios.