Prof. Tobias Dörnbach, PhD Tobias Dörnbach

Human-Centered Robotics Lab

Within the Human-Centered Robotics Lab, together with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reinhard Gerndt I work on Human-Machine Interaction in the context of autonomous Systems. In Room 162, a robot arena is available where for diverse robots different scenarios can be implemented and tested.

Human-Centered Robotics Lab

Currently, the following systems reside in the lab: two humanoid robots Pepper, humanoid robot Cruzr (in the Open Mobility Lab), two telepresence robots Temi, collaborative robots Baxter and Sawyer, self-developed system FireBot, plus additional small robots for teaching.

For using any robots, please book a time slot in the booking system!

Human-Machine Interaction for autonomous Systems

My research deals with human operators in the Industry 4.0 or in service areas can act in unity with autonomous systems. The machines should be regarded as independently acting assistant, hence supporting humans reliably. This happens by autonomously detecting occuring failures and calling an operator in case of problems. The operator can solve the problem, allowing the system to return into autonomous operation. This is known under termins like "shared autonomy" and, more specifially, "operator in the loop".

User-friendly control and programming of heterogeneous robot fleets

In addition, I research collaboration of heterogeneous autonomous systems in combined robot fleets. In order to be able to collaborate with humans in everyday scenarios, e.g. in service-oriented domains, these should be able to be programmed easily by a domain expert without the domain expert possessing deep technical knowledge. This can use, for instance, tools for Visual Programming that are usable intuitively. Such a tool has been used in this barkeeper scenario:

Robotic Barkeeper

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Fleets of robots and other autonomous systems

In the industry, but upcoming also in everyday applications, many types of autonomous systems are used, for instance, mobile robots, autonomous vehicles or intelligent intra-logistics systems. Their functionality is defined mainly by software, like in this product:

Automated Layer Descrambler

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Such systems can be deployed in large numbers anywhere in the world, but in case of errors, they can call a central "Operator 4.0" for assistance via the internet which can then fix the problem.

Assistive Technologies and Service Robotics

Domestic robots, robots in stores or in care facilities have to be able to act autonomously. Interaction with humans thereby is the main challenge. In order to be really useful permanently in everyday situations, these systems need to master a large number of tasks and be able to deal with disturbances and incomplete information. Only this enables the systems to deal with complex scenarios like the one of a butler:

The Robot Butler Scenario

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In this kind of scenarios, problems can appear as well that the robot with its accumulated knowledge is not able to solve. The robot can then call for assistance of a human operator, which in turn can show the robot how to solve this specific task.

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