Prof. Dr. Stefan Wermter is professor of computer science and the head of the knowledge technology research group at the University of Hamburg.

He is dedicated to researching artificial intelligence and knowledge technology for intelligent systems of the future. New research approaches are inspired by nature, for example from neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology, and use hybrid neural and symbolic forms of information processing. The intelligent systems of interest to this research area include learning and interactive knowledge technologies, learning multimodal neural agents with visual and language skills, and neuro-inspired and continuously learning robot assistants.

Professor Wermter’s research interests revolve around the topic of ‘learning robot assistants’. For example, his work includes:

• Neural networks and deep learning
• Hybrid neural-symbolic architectures
• Machine learning for texts and text categorisation
• Learning speech recognition and dialogue management
• Learning the localisation of sound sources
• Object recognition and situations
• Assistive mobile robot assistants
• Environmental understanding, localisation and navigation of mobile robots
• Human-robot interaction (e.g. in-house development of the ‘NICO’ robot)
• Gesture and action recognition
• Emotion recognition and generation
• Fall detection of persons in the household

Professor Wermter and his research department offer a wide variety of cooperation formats:

• Joint projects for cooperation with experienced industry partners, e.g. with expertise in the areas of human-robot interaction or multimodal knowledge processing in domestic environments, particularly in connection with smart home solutions or support for older people in their daily lives.
• Student theses: Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees
• Collaborations for doctoral theses
• Direct participation in joint projects (BMBF, EU, DFG, etc.)
• Student projects
• Individual commissioned work and funding for scientific projects

The research area develops learning robot assistants as research platforms in order to test various aspects of novel knowledge technologies under challenging real-world conditions. In addition, theoretical developments and other applications are pursued. To this end, extensive national and international third-party funding projects of various sizes have already been acquired. This research area is very interested in new innovative partnerships, especially in the field of learning cognitive knowledge technologies.

Further information can be found on the websites of the Knowledge Technology Research Area.