Event Chairs

Karsten Berns University of Kaiserslautern-Landau Germany http://agrosy.informatik.uni-kl.de/

Brief Bio
Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns has studied computer science with a special focus on artificial intelligence at the University of Kaiserslautern (1982 to 1988). For his research on "Neural Networks for the Control of a six-legged Walking Machine" he received his PhD from the University of Karlsruhe in 1994. As head of the IDS (Interactive Diagnosis and Service Systems) department of the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe (till 2003) he examined adaptive control concepts for different types of service robots. Since 2003 he is a full professor at the University of Kaiserslautern. Present research act ivities are the realization of reliable, complex autonomous robotic systems. Therefore, he and his research group are developing the robotic middleware Finroc, the behavior-based control architecture iB2C as well as different validation and verification methodologies. The main application is off-road robotics, in which autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles like small trucks, excavators, harvesters, tractors, and rescue robots are under development.Prof. Berns is frequently reviewer of several journals and robotic conferences. Furthermore, he is a member of a number of editorial boards. He also acts as reviewer for several national and international funding organizations. He is member of the IEEE, the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and the CLAWAR Association. He is a member of the executive committee of the German Robotics Association (DGR) and is leader of the technical committee for robotic systems of the GI. He was Dean of the department of computer science at the University of Kaiserslautern (2007 – 2010) and is member of the scientific directorate Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics of the Dagstuhl Seminar. Currently, he is spokesperson of the Center for Commercial Vehicle Technology (ZNT) at the University of Kaiserslautern. ... More >>

Jeroen Ploeg Siemens Industry Software Netherlands B.V. Netherlands

Brief Bio
Jeroen Ploeg received the M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 1988 and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering on the control of vehicle platoons from Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 2014. He is currently with 2getthere, Utrecht, The Netherlands, were he leads the research and development activities in the field of cooperative automated driving for automated transit systems, in particular platooning. Since 2017, he also holds the position of part-time Associate Professor with the Mechanical Engineering Departm ent, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. From 1989 to 1999, he was with Tata Steel, IJmuiden, The Netherlands, where his interest was in the development and implementation of dynamic process control systems for large-scale industrial plants. He was with TNO, Helmond, The Netherlands, from 1999 until 2017, ultimately as a Principal Scientist in the field of vehicle automation and road safety assessment. His research interests include control system design for cooperative and automated vehicles, in particular string stability of vehicle platoons, the design of interaction protocols for complex driving scenarios, and motion control of wheeled mobile robots. ... More >>

Arnaud de La Fortelle Heex Technologies France

Brief Bio
Dr. Arnaud de La Fortelle has engineer degrees from the French École Polytechnique and École des Ponts et Chaussées (2 top French institutions) and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics prepared at Inria. He has been director (2008-2021) of the Center for Robotics of Mines Paris (PSL University). He was Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley in 2017-2018. He is an elected member of the Board of Governors of IEEE Intelligent Transportation System Society. He has been member of several program committees for conferences and was General Chair of IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2019 in Paris (900 attendees). He was member, t hen president of the French ANR scientific evaluation committee for sustainable mobility and cities. He serves regularly as expert for the European research programs.

He co-founded Heex Technologies in 2019 and moved to a full-time position there as CTO in 2021. He designed the vision and the technology behind Smart Data Management. Smart Data is a powerful way to address current and future Big Data limitations, especially needed for autonomous systems (Autonomous Driving, ADAS, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities…). Heex Technologies has recently raised €6 million from a pool of DeepTech investors, bringing the company's total funding to nearly €10 million, to develop its Smart Data platform and expand its services. ... More >>