General Info

The Robotics group started at the very beginning of academic activities at Jacobs University in fall 2001. Much like Jacobs itself as a novel, highly selective institution in the German university landscape, the robotics group is committed to excellence in research. The group is truly international with English as working language. Jacobs University was called International University Bremen (IUB) before 2007; you may hence find the name IUB for example in older publications on this website.

Jacobs Robotics is embedded in the research focus area Mobility with teaching activites in the department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering. Jacobs University offers the flagship BSc program Robotics and Intelligent Systems (RIS).

The research of the group focuses on Autonomous Systems. The expertise in this field ranges from the development of embedded hardware over mechatronics and sensors to high-level software. On the basic research side of autonomous systems, 3D perception and world-modeling as well as cooperation are core themes of robotics research at Jacobs University. The systems developed here are used in various domains, including marine robotics, logistics, and safety, security and rescue robots (SSRR).

News

Astronaut Thomas Reiter visits the Robotics Lab

28 Nov 2017

The astronaut Thomas Reiter, who is currently Interagency Coordinator and Advisor to the Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA), visited the Robotics Laboratory as part of his university lecture at Jacobs University. He attended different demonstrations of robotics experiments linked to machine perception in unstructured environments. The demonstrations included among others work in the context of planterary exploration, e.g., the ESA Lunar Robotics Challenge and the DLR Spacebot Cup. Thomas Reiter was very interested in the presented research and engaged in long conversations with the involved researchers.

Making deep-sea underwater robots more effective: successful field trials in the Mediterranean sea

25 Jul 2017

Robotics experts from Jacobs University work together with European colleagues on an EU-funded project to add more automated functions to underwater robots used in the deep-sea, e.g., for scientific exploration or in off-shore oil and gas production. Named “Effective Dexterous ROV Operations in Presence of Communications Latencies (DexROV)”, the project is funded by the EU within the H2020 framework in the area “Bluegrowth”.

Former PhD-student/Postdoc Sören Schwertferger featured in New York Times

27 May 2017

Sören Schwertfeger is featured in an extensive article in the New York Times. Sören worked as PhD student and Postdoc in the Jacobs Robotics Group and he is now a Professor at Shanghai Tech University.

Visit by a delegation from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technologies (SIAT)

1 Apr 2016

A delegation of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technologies (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) headed by the president of SIAT Professor Jianping Fan has recently visited Jacobs University to get an overview of the robotics research activities and to establish new collaboration in research and education.

Feature in TV News Magazine "buten un binnen"

14 Jan 2016

The Radio Bremen TV News Magazine "buten un binnen" shows feature on work of Jacobs Robotics on underwater human robot interaction based on gesture communication.