The German Aerospace Center is the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research of Germany, founded in 1969. It is headquartered in Cologne with 35 locations throughout Germany. The DLR is engaged in a wide range of research and development projects in national and international partnerships.
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the computational problem of constructing or updating a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously keeping track of an agent's location within it. While this initially appears to be a chicken or the egg problem, there are several algorithms known to solve it in, at least approximately, tractable time for certain environments. Popular approximate solution methods include the particle filter, extended Kalman filter, covariance intersection, and GraphSLAM. SLAM algorithms are based on concepts in computational geometry and computer vision, and are used in robot navigation, robotic mapping and odometry for virtual reality or augmented reality.
Arburg GmbH + Co KG is a German machine manufacturing company. It is owned by the Hehl and Keinath families and, with its electric, hybrid and hydraulic plastic injection moulding machines, turnkey systems and its industrial additive manufacturing system, is among the industry leaders worldwide. With approximately 2,500 employees in Germany and a further 500 worldwide, Arburg serves sales markets for machines with clamping forces ranging from 125 to 6,500 kN.
3D scanning is the process of analyzing a real-world object or environment to collect three dimensional data of its shape and possibly its appearance. The collected data can then be used to construct digital 3D models.
OmniVision Technologies Inc. is an American subsidiary of Chinese semiconductor device and mixed-signal integrated circuit design house Will Semiconductor. The company designs and develops digital imaging products for use in mobile phones, laptops, netbooks webcams, security, entertainment, automotive and medical imaging systems. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, OmniVision Technologies has offices in the US, Western Europe and Asia.
Canesta was a fabless semiconductor company that was founded in April 1999, by Cyrus Bamji, Abbas Rafii, and Nazim Kareemi.
A vision-guided robot (VGR) system is basically a robot fitted with one or more cameras used as sensors to provide a secondary feedback signal to the robot controller to more accurately move to a variable target position. VGR is rapidly transforming production processes by enabling robots to be highly adaptable and more easily implemented, while dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of fixed tooling previously associated with the design and set up of robotic cells, whether for material handling, automated assembly, agricultural applications, life sciences, and more.
A time-of-flight camera, also known as time-of-flight sensor, is a range imaging camera system for measuring distances between the camera and the subject for each point of the image based on time-of-flight, the round trip time of an artificial light signal, as provided by a laser or an LED. Laser-based time-of-flight cameras are part of a broader class of scannerless LIDAR, in which the entire scene is captured with each laser pulse, as opposed to point-by-point with a laser beam such as in scanning LIDAR systems. Time-of-flight camera products for civil applications began to emerge around 2000, as the semiconductor processes allowed the production of components fast enough for such devices. The systems cover ranges of a few centimeters up to several kilometers.
Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of 555 companies in the microelectronics and related sectors in Saxony, Germany, with around 40,000 employees. Many, but not all, of those firms are situated in the north of Dresden.
The eye-tracking device (ETD) is a headmounted device, designed for measurement of 3D eye and head movements under experimental and natural conditions. The tracker permits comprehensive measurement of eye movement and optionally head movement. It represents a tool for the investigation of sensorimotor behaviour, particularly of the vestibular and oculomotor systems in both health and disease.
MetraLabs GmbH is a German robotics company, specializing in the development and production of service robots for industrial, commercial, and retail markets. MetraLabs was founded by graduates of the Ilmenau University of Technology and has a connection with the University Neuroinformatics and Cognitive Robotics Lab, headed by Professor Groß. Together, they have worked on multiple projects, including the development of a senior citizen assistant robot.
Planetary Transportation Systems (PTS), formerly known as PTScientists and Part-Time Scientists, is a Berlin-based aerospace company. They developed the robotic lunar lander "ALINA" and seek to land on the Moon with it. They became the first German team to officially enter the Google Lunar X-Prize competition on June 24, 2009, but failed to reach the finals in 2017 for lack of a launch contract. During the summer of 2019, the company filed for bankruptcy, and the ALINA project was put on hold. In July 2021, PTS was selected with ArianeGroup to build ESA's ASTRIS kick-stage.
PrimeSense was an Israeli 3D sensing company based in Tel Aviv. PrimeSense had offices in Israel, North America, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China and Taiwan. PrimeSense was bought by Apple Inc. for $360 million on November 24, 2013.
Justin is an autonomous and programmable humanoid robot with two arms, developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, located in Wessling, Germany. Introduced in 2009, this wireless robot is controllable through telepresence, a type of technology that allows a person to feel as if they were present from a location other than their true location.
Sabina Jeschke is a German university professor for information sciences in mechanical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University. As of 10 November 2017, she was named member of the management board of Deutschen Bahn AG for digitalization and technology. She is also the director of the Cybernetics Lab IMA/ZLW & IfU. In the summer semester of 2017, she is on sabbatical leave to develop her research in the area of artificial consciousness, and is involved in building a think tank "Strong Artificial Intelligence" at the Volvo Car Corporation in Göteborg. Since May 2015, Jeschke has been a member of the supervisory board of Körber AG, since April 2012 chairman of the board of VDI Aachen. Beginning of January 2023 she took on an additional position as a senior advisor at Arthur D. Little.
"Fourth Industrial Revolution", "4IR", or "Industry 4.0" is a neologism describing rapid technological advancement in the 21st century. It follows the Third Industrial Revolution. The term was popularised in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman, who asserts that these developments represent a significant shift in industrial capitalism.
The workerbot is a trademark, which was developed by the pi4 robotics GmbH to describe an industrial robot, which was modeled with its possibilities of movement and its sensory abilities of a human.
Gestigon is a software development company founded in September 2011, to develop software for gesture control and body tracking based on 3D depth data.
Telespazio Germany GmbH is a European aerospace company, founded in 1978. The company provides consulting, technology and engineering services in aerospace missions for ESOC, EUMETSAT and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Hofmann GmbH Maschinenfabrik und Vertrieb is a family-owned German company, based in Rellingen. That develops, produces and distributes road marking machines. The company was founded in 1952 in Hamburg.
