DFKI Lab Bremen is a new laboratory of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) with original sites in Saarbrücken and Kaiserslautern. DFKI Lab Bremen is associated with the Informatics Department at Universität Bremen and is located on the Bremen University campus, acting as a knowledge transfer center between basic research at the university and applied research and development in cooperation with the industry. In its department of Safe Cognitive Systems one goal is the development of assistant systems for the elderly or persons with restricted abilities, e.g. intelligent wheelchairs, with particular emphasis on safety and adaptive, cognitively adequate interaction.

The city and state of Bremen is the winner of the City of Science 2005 award of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, the umbrella organization of the German Science Foundations. Bremen is the first city ever to receive this award. The city and State of Bremen have been investing considerably in a modern infrastructure for excellent international research and development.

The Bremen researchers in the SHARE-IT consortium are all members of the German Science Foundation (DFG) funded Transregional Collaborative Research Center SFB/TR 8 Spatial Reasoning: Reasoning, Action, Interaction that was founded in 2003 and of the International Quality Network (IQN) for Spatial Cognition and former members of the DFG-funded Spatial Cognition Priority Program (1996-2002). They also participated in the EU HCM program Spacenet. In the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition basic research towards spatial assistance systems is carried out.

Key people

Bernd Krieg-Brückner has been a professor at Universität Bremen since 1982 (full professor since 1987). His research concentrates, on the one hand, on the development of formal languages, methods and tools for the development of correct software (e.g. coordinator of EU projects PROSPECTRA and COMPASS; German DFG projects and BMFT project Universal Formal Methods Workbench; as a member of IFIP WG 1.3, the development of the Common Algebraic Specification Language, CASL, an associated support and verification environment) as a basis for abstraction and reuse of formal developments, and safety and security.

In parallel, he built up a group in the area of cognitive science and robotics since 1990 (e.g. as chairman of the DFG Graduate College “Spatial Orientation and Organisation of Action of Autonomous Systems”; participation in the DFG Priority Programs “Spatial Cognition” and “Cooperating Teams of Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments (RoboCup)”; strong involvement in the DFG Research Center (SFB/TR8) “Spatial Cognition” in projects “Maps for Robot Navigation”,“Shared Control via Dialogs”, and “Specification for the Integration of Spatial Concepts”. Here, the two strains of research intertwine, and formal specification, formal ontology, formal safety are applied to cognitive science and robotics, in particular the autonomous wheelchair Rolland.

He is a founder of DFKI Lab Bremen and director of its department of Safe and Secure Cognitive Systems.

Thomas Röfer has been an assistant professor (C1) for Cognitive Robotics at the computer science department of the University of Bremen since 2000, and started to work at the DFKI Lab Bremen in 2006. His research areas are autonomous mobile robots, especially in the area of rehabilitation robotics and robot soccer. He participated in the DFG Priority Programs “Spatial Cognition” and “Cooperating Teams of Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments (RoboCup)” as well as in the DFG Research Center (SFB/TR8) “Spatial Cognition” in the projects “Maps for Robot Navigation” and “Three-Dimensional Map Construction”.

Thomas Röfer is Executive Member of the RoboCup Federation, and member of the Technical and Organizing Committees since 2003 (Organizing Chair in 2004, Local Organizing Chair for the 2006 World Championship at Bremen). He is the coordinator of the 2004 and 2005 world champion GermanTeam in the RoboCup Four-Legged League, as well as team leader of the RoboCup teams Bremen Byters (Four-Legged League, part of the GermanTeam), BreDoBrothers (Humanoid League), and team co-leader of BSmart (Small-Size League, European vice-champion 2006).