University of Hamburg

About us

The main research topic of the group TAMS is to examine the interaction of different modalities of sensory and cognitive systems including vision, writing, hearing, talking, touching/feeling and grasping. The interaction between people and technical information systems and communication systems is directly related to multimodality. The main application area and demonstrator platform of our work is intelligent service robotics. Our group owns several state-of-the-art robots, designed and built to our specifications, which allow us to test new system architectures and algorithms for sensor-driven manipulation, intelligent sensors, cognitive robotics, and human-machine interaction.

Both hardware and software aspects are addressed like distributed software architectures or the development of smart sensor systems (vision and laser scanner). In the group, work on mobile navigation is strongly coupled with research on the grasping and manipulation of everyday objects.

Approaches to active robot vision and active illumination are being intensively investigated (BMBF project IVUS ``Intelligent Vision Systems for Service Robots'', 2006-2009). Multimodal robot action representation is being studied in the CINACS project (DFG-IRTG “Cross-modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems”.)

TAMS is also a member of the "LExI-Hamburg" within the project “NANOSPINTRONICS” and is working on the automation of nanomanipulators. The group TAMS has successfully coordinated the FP6 Project MING-T (2007-2008) and is participating in the FP7 IP HANDLE and the CA  ASSYST.

What motivates us

UHAM participates in ECHORD for many reasons. The main reason is to bring results from theoretical and laboratory research to real world applications. ECHORD gives us the possibility to take advantage of our previous work in the research field of manipulation and fits exactly regarding the scale of such an experiment. The collaboration and knowledge exchange with our partners will greatly extend the experience of our group.

The partners of HYFLAM also see a big potential in the technology developed within this experiment.

The aim of the proposed research experiment is to bring hyper-flexible work cells for laboratories a step closer towards the commercial market. At the moment the work we are intending to do with a robot manipulator can only be accomplished by a human either using glove-boxes or working directly in the isolated area wearing a protection suit. Using robot systems could in future help to enhance the safety of laboratories by reducing the risk of people getting in contact with hazardous material.