Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns

University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Head of Research Group in Robot Systems

Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns received his PhD from the University of Karlsruhe in 1994. As head of the IDS (Interactive Diagnosis and Service Systems) department of the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe (till 2003) he examined adaptive control concepts for different types of service robots. Since 2003 he is a full professor at the University of Kaiserslautern.

His present research activities are realization of reliable, complex autonomous robotic systems. The main application area is off-road robotics, in which autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles like small trucks, excavators, harvesters, tractors, and rescue robots are under development.

Prof. Berns is a member of the IEEE, the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and the CLAWAR Association. He is a member of the executive committee of the German Robotics Association (DGR) and is leader of the technical committee for robotic systems of the GI. He has also served as a Dean of the department of computer science at the University of Kaiserslautern (2007-2010). Currently, he is the spokesperson of the Center for Commercial Vehicle Technology (ZNT) at the University of Kaiserslautern.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hubert Roth

University of Siegen, Germany

Head of the:

• Chair of Automatic Control Engineering (RST)
• ZESS Project Area 4 "Automation, Mechatronics and Medical Technology"
• International Graduate Studies in Mechatronics

Member of the:

• International Postgraduate Programme Committee on Multi Sensorics of the ZESS

Prof. Dr. Marcus Liwicki

University of Freibourg, Switzerland.

Head of the MindGarage

Marcus Liwicki received his M.S. degree in Computer Science from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, in 2004, his PhD degree from the University of Bern, Switzerland, in 2007, and his habilitation degree at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 2011. Currently he is an apl.-professor in the University of Kaiserslautern and a senior assistant in the University of Fribourg. His research interests include machine learning, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, digital humanities, knowledge management, ubiquitous intuitive input devices, document analysis, and graph matching. From October 2009 to March 2010 he visited Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan) as a research fellow (visiting professor), supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2015, at the young age of 32, he received the ICDAR young investigator award, a bi-annual award acknowledging outstanding achievements of in pattern recognition for researchers up to the age of 40.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schwanecke

Computer Vision & Mixed Reality

University of RheinMain, Germany

Ulrich Schwanecke received his Master's degree (Dipl.-Math.) in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1997. From 1997 to 2000 he worked as a research assistant at Technische Universität Darmstadt from where he received his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in 2000. Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral position for one year at the Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken. From 2001 to 2003 he worked as a researcher at Daimler AG in Ulm. Since October 2003 he is a full professor for Computer Science in the Faculty of Design - Computer Science - Media at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences.

Dr. Adrian Ulges

Professor

University of RheinMain, Germany

Dr. Adrian Ulges graduated from TU Kaiserslautern (2009 PhD in computer science, 2005 diploma in computer science) and has been as a researcher with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern / Germany (2005-2011). His research interests are in maschine learning, computer vision, and multimedia analysis. He worked with Google as an intern (2005, Mountain View) and as a visiting scientist (2011, Zurich). Since 2013, he is been a full professor at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences (HSRM), with interests in applied mathematics and machine learning. Adrian's research has been awarded with a Google Research Award in 2010, and his publication record includes over 30 peer-reviewed papers.

Dr. Mansoor Shaukat

Assistant Professor

Director CRG , Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering (CASE) Islamabad

Founder and CEO, RoboMinors

PhD, National University of Singapore

Dr. Noman Naseer

Assistant Professor, Air University, Islamabad.

Dr. Noman Naseer is originally a Mechatronics Engineer, who did his Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D. all in Mechatronics Engineering. He did his PhD from the Department of Cogno-Mechatronics Engineering at Pusan National University, South Korea. His Ph.D. research was supported by the World Class University Program. Dr. Naseer has published 45 peer-reviewed papers and his papers have received around 600 citations from all around the globe. Reference to his contributions in the field of functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based brain-computer interfaces, his biography was featured in the 32^nd edition of Who’s who in the world, Berkeley, USA as a notable international researcher.

Dr. Naseer has an honor to be selected as a Marie-Curie Post-Doctorate fellow. Dr. Naseer has served as a reviewer for more than 36 ISI Indexed journals and is currently serving as the associate editor of three ISI Indexed journals. Currently, he is associated with the Department of Mechatronics Engineering at Air University, Islamabad where he is heading the Neurorobotics Research Group. His current research interests include: Brain-Robot interfacing, robotics, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, non-linear control systems and machine vision.

Dr. Sajjad Haider

Faculty of Computer Science, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.

Dr. Sajjad Haider is a Professor of Computer Science at Institute of Business Administration Karachi (IBA) and an Honorary Associate in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He heads the Artificial Intelligence Lab at IBA and is Team Lead of Karachi Koalas, which is a joint RoboCup 3D Simulation League team of UTS and IBA. His research interests are in Data Science, Cognitive Robotics, Business Analytics, Probabilistic Reasoning, Computational Intelligence, Systems Engineering, Decision Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Game Programming.

Dr. Syed Atif Mehdi

Director, Center Of Robotics And Security

Assistant Professor, University of Central Punjab, Lahore.

Syed Atif Mehdi received his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan in the year 2001. For the Bachelor Project, he worked for 8 months at NetSol International in the year 2000 as an internee. After completing BS, he joined NetSol as a "Software Engineer" and worked there for almost 7 months. Afterwards, he completed his Master in Computer Science Degree with specialization in artificial intelligence from National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan. He served as a lecturer at University of Management and Technology till 2007.

He was awarded scholarship by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan to pursue his PhD from Germany in the year 2007. He joined the Robotics Research Lab in October 2007 and completed his PhD in the year 2014. During his PhD, his focus was on learning the presence of an elderly person in the home environment using daily routine of the person. Afterwards, he worked as a Post-Doc in the group and was responsible for the development of an autonomous Oct-copter that can perform various inspection tasks. Currently he is employeed at University of Central Punjab.

M. Sc. Tobias Groll

Researcher, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Tobias Groll has studied computer science at the University of Kaiserslautern from 2008 till 2015. He completed his master studies with the master thesis "Backhoe Loader Control". His objective during his thesis was to control the arm of a backhoe loader vehicle. Since February 2015, he is a doctoral fellow at the Robotics Research Lab.

Dipl.-Ing. Alexander Köpper

Researcher, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Alexander Köpper was born in Bad Ems in 1987. From 2007 to 2013, he studied electrical engineering with focal point on automatic control at the University of Kaiserslautern. His Diploma thesis with the title „Ein Ansatz zur modularen, einheitlichen Entwicklung von eingebetteten Systemen“ (An approach for modular, homogeneous development of embedded systems), was carried out at the Fraunhofer IESE in Kaiserslautern.

Since the end of the year 2013, he is a PhD fellow at the University of Kaiserslautern and works at the Robotics Research Lab.

His research focuses on FPGA-based control architectures for innovative robot systems.

M. Sc. Steffen Hemer

Researcher, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Steffen Hemer studied applied computer science at TU Kaiserslautern from 2006 to 2015. Already since 2008, he cares for the school courses of the Robotics Research Lab and wrote his bachelor thesis about the development of a LeJOS simulation for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots. He finished his postgraduate studies with the thesis "Trajectory Planning for Typical Excavation Tasks". Since 2015 he is working as PhD student in the Robotics Research Lab and continues research on the automation of a backhoe loader.