AI mobility node takes off

The first strategy meeting took place last Thursday at the Paradeplatz in Ingolstadt in the premises of FORTEC, the Department for Research Promotion at the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI). The participants were the new professors for artificial intelligence in the field of mobility: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bock (teaching area for "AI Applications in Innovative Production and Logistics Systems"), Prof. Dr. Torsten Schön ("Computer Vision for Intelligent Mobility Systems") and Prof. Dr. Munir Georges ("Speech and Text Comprehension"). The round was extended by two endowed professors: Prof. Dr. Stefan Kugele with the teaching area "Model-based Systems Engineering and Software Engineering" is funded by Airbus Defence and Space. Prof. Dr. Marc Aubreville, who teaches "Image Understanding and Medical Application of Artificial Intelligence", has accepted an endowed chair at Ingolstadt Hospital.

Under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Botsch, scientific director of AININ, the THI research network for AI, the expert panel already discussed pioneering issues. Prof. Botsch: "We have set ourselves lighthouse projects for the AI mobility node. The new colleagues bring a great deal of expertise with them. We are now thinking intensively about how to tackle these highly complex issues and get them off the ground".

Since 1 October, the AI mobility node has been managed by Dr. Christian Lösel, former Lord Mayor of Ingolstadt. As part of Bavaria's High-Tech Agenda, Ingolstadt and the THI are the hub for AI-supported mobility. The potential in the areas of autonomous driving, unmanned flying and AI-controlled automobile production, which are particularly relevant for future mobility, is being researched. The research results will be transferred into applications, thus enabling decisive innovative leaps forward. The new THI professors with their scientific and professional backgrounds will make an important contribution to this.

Prof. Schön: "I have a doctorate in bioinformatics and have been involved in machine learning all my professional life. I have had the opportunity to work for various start-ups, supplier companies and, over the past six years, for Audi AG. Most recently, I was involved in building up the AI activities at the newly founded VW subsidiary Car.Software-Organisation.

Prof. Bock: "Before my appointment to the THI, I was responsible for the Smart Data and Infrastructure research cluster at KUKA. From my background I am a computer scientist and have always been focused on symbolic AI, which can be transferred very well to the application field of production and logistics. There is potential in process modelling, knowledge about components or in the description of product requirements, among other things".

Prof. Georges: "I teach a machine to understand people. The machine can be anything: a car, a coffee machine, a television. Or the air taxi you call, a drone that picks up mail and you can tell it to leave the package in front of the garage and not in front of the door".

Prof. Kugele: "I did my doctorate in computer science at the TUM. My research focus is the formal modelling of software-intensive technical systems. So I use formal models to reduce the complexity of cyber-physical systems by abstraction and to present them in a simplified way for further development. Here at the THI, I would like to take an interdisciplinary approach to my research, which has so far focused on software and automobiles, and extend it to other areas of application such as avionics, in particular to subsystems realised using AI methods".

Prof. Aubreville: "I completed my doctorate in Erlangen. My subject is medical image processing. My goal is to apply and explain AI in medicine together with doctors. To achieve this, I would like to expand my research here at the THI and I am looking forward to teaching."