Activities 2026 (Archive)

Two days of knowledge sharing, presentations, and demonstration sessions with representatives from public contracting authorities and various research institutions, such as the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and the Fraunhofer FKIE.

Of course, as a partner of ROBDEKON-robotic systems for decontamination in hostile environments with the demo 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗲:

The functional requirements for novel robotic systems are significantly higher than those for conventional industrial robots. Future robotic systems are expected to operate in hostile environments and perform complex tasks. Here, our autonomous excavator ALICE is in action.

🗣️ Your contact person and, here at the event, also the host of the demonstration: Janko Petereit.

The Control Engineering Colloquium in Boppard is the annual meeting place for the control engineering community in German-speaking countries. Around 80 control engineering professors, numerous automation engineering professors, around 100 research assistants and a number of industry and association representatives regularly take part.

In contrast to specialist conferences, the Control Engineering Colloquium primarily has the character and function of a forum in which universities and research institutes in German-speaking countries present and discuss the latest results and innovative ideas from research and development in the field of measurement, control and automation technology.

Another aim of the colloquium is to bring together representatives from research and teaching with invited guests from industry for a mutually beneficial discussion on current issues and tasks in industrial practice and the applicability of new, efficient solution methods and concepts.

👉 MRD is responsible for organizational management here, led by Janko Petereit.

In this series of events organized by KAMO, researchers from Karlsruhe and representatives of innovative companies will present the results of current research projects. Three engaging introductory talks on the topic of “𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 and 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺,” not as a lecture, but as a basis for joint discussion and exchange of ideas.

The focus is on everything the KAMO ecosystem has to offer, with the main goal being tangible, concrete results – from more sustainable fuels to bike sharing in the Regiomove app and autonomous driving. Research results with international impact, developed in Karlsruhe.

👉 MRD is represented by Jens Ziehn, who will discuss scalable methods for comprehensively capturing critical situations in real-world traffic. Using this data, scenarios for future automated vehicles can be tested and their safety enhanced. Learn how these simulations help take the safety and reliability of future automated vehicles – whether on the highway or while parking – to a new level.

The 9th ML4CPS offers a platform for exchange between researchers and users from various fields. Cyber-physical systems have the ability to adapt to changing requirements. In conjunction with machine learning, various areas such as predictive maintenance, self-optimization and fault diagnosis are conceivable. An essential prerequisite for exploiting this potential is the accessibility of machine learning techniques for engineers.

It is hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB, Helmut Schmidt University (HSU), Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and the Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components (PEM) at RWTH Aachen University.

👉 We are co-organizers, on the committee and represented by two presentations by Christian Kühnert:

"Demand Forecasting in Water Distribution Systems: A Practitioner’s Perspective on Operationalization, Transferability, and Scalability" and

"Analyzing and Comparing Ecosystem Assessments of Reservoirs: A Data-Centric Approach"

🤖 Exciting discussions and strong networks at the 2nd German Robotics Conference. That’s what you’ll find at the Fraunhofer IOSB booth at the Field Robotics Cluster, where we’re exchanging ideas with partners from across the robotics community. The conference offers an excellent opportunity to bring the communities of ROBDEKON – robotic systems for decontamination in hostile environments and the Robotics Institute Germany closer together and to explore new ideas for collaboration. 

Our colleagues Janko Petereit and Raphael Hagmann are there, presenting, among other things, a poster presentation:

👉 "The 2025 GOOSE Dataset Competition for Semantic Segmentation in Unstructured Environments"

The event brings together leading representatives from politics, academia, business, and the startup sector to strengthen the connection between research, innovation, and technology transfer. New highlights include half-day workshops and the RIG Heroes Award Night, which recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of robotics and AI.

This is the theme of the celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of KAMO: the Karlsruhe Mobility Competence Center. Since 2016, the center has brought together partners KIT, the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, and the four Karlsruhe-based Fraunhofer Institutes ICT, ISI, IWM, and IOSB in research and development on future mobility systems. The interdisciplinary work covers the entire spectrum from lightweight construction and powertrain systems to bicycle traffic research, AI, and autonomous driving.

On March 16, the KAMO Performance Center held a celebration at the Karlsruhe Chamber of Industry and Commerce, attended by nearly 200 invited guests and partners. The event showcased a wide range of project outcomes from recent years including those from the KAMO research area “Digitalization,” led by Adamantia Goulandris (FZI) and Jens Ziehn (Fraunhofer IOSB). These include:

👉 DAKIMO-Project, which has developed AI-based solutions to make the seamless integration of bicycles, e-scooters, and public transportation more accessible and reliable,
👉 AVEAS-Project, in which data for the safe testing of autonomous driving functions was collected, including from the air, and
👉 the open OCTAS^®-simulation framework used to develop and test future mobility systems, such as the autonomous ALBACOPER^® drone.

We’re excited to see what the next 10 years of mobility research from Karlsruhe will bring!

The intelligent district heating distribution networks of the future—smart grids—feature online network monitoring to efficiently collect consumption data digitally (smart metering) and to calibrate the distribution network’s digital twin in real time. Algorithms analyze the data to assess the network’s status and identify options for efficient operation. If valves need to be actuated, this is done remotely.

As part of the 3SmatFW collaboration project, the partners 3S Consult GmbH, Fraunhofer IOSB, and 3S Antriebe GmbH have developed prototypes of the components needed for a smart district heating network.

👉 Read the full article and find even more information on our project website (see the boxes on the right).

Girls'Day aims to make technical, scientific, trade and IT professions in particular more attractive to girls and young women.

In addition to practical experience, female role models in STEM subjects are the key to encouraging girls to learn a profession in this field. The key message of the 2017 Microsoft study was that girls can be inspired to pursue STEM disciplines through female role models and more practical experience.

Fraunhofer IOSB will be represented again this year with six workshops.
We are participating with a workshop:

👉 Getting started with programming – with your own game! 🔧✨ 

Try out programming for yourself and make the game your own little project. At the end, you can take your source code home with you.  Supervisor: Anne Sielmann and Tobias Hellmund (ILT).

Bilfinger and Fraunhofer IOSB are developing a teleoperated retrieval system on behalf of the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) to retrieve radioactive waste from the Asse II mine. The goal is to enable the safe, precise, and efficient exposure and retrieval of the waste drums – using multifunctional work machines, modern robotics, and assistance functions for the control center.

Read the press release, which focuses on the following topics:

• The Challenge of the Asse II Mine: Retrieval as a Generational Project
• Specialized machinery for extreme conditions
• Robotics, sensors, and assistance
• Safe remote operation
• Forward-looking comprehensive concept

🗣️ Your contact person: Janko Petereit.

Europe’s largest geoscience event. Every year, it brings together scientists from all over the world. Few other events bring together so many disciplines under one roof: natural hazards, climate science, planetary science … and many more, fostering interdisciplinary exchange, new ideas, and cutting-edge research.

✔️ 𝗕𝗶𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁ä𝘁 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗻, 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁ä𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗻

»Die 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗴 vor der wir aktuell stehen, ist die Zusammenführung extrem heterogener Datenquellen in einer Datenbank, immer mit dem Ziel diese so verfügbar zu machen, dass anschließend KI-Modelle mit wenig Aufwand trainiert werden können« so Andreas Wunsch. Unser Kollege ist vor Ort mit einem Posterbeitag:

»The challenge we currently face is integrating extremely heterogeneous data sources into a single database, always with the goal of making them available in such a way that AI models can subsequently be trained with minimal effort,« says Andreas Wunsch. Our colleague is on site with a poster presentation:

»IQ Water: AI-supported modeling and forecasting of biodiversity and water quality in drinking water reservoirs«

In May, Stadtwerke München hosted a workshop organized by the district heating consortium funded by the BMWK. The focus was on current challenges and potential solutions for the decarbonization of district heating networks.

The partners in the research projects En-Eff_Netzregelung, SimKI-Mop, AGENT4heat, and SAM-FW presented practical findings on:

🔹 Energy-Efficiency-Based Grid Control
🔹 Use of Simulation and AI for Operational Optimization
🔹 Sustainable Asset Management to Improve Efficiency and Extend Service Life
🔹 Secure Digital Transformation

During poster sessions and interactive workshops, there was lively discussion on how innovative solutions in digitalization, optimization, and security can be widely implemented in practice.

We were represented by Steffen Wallner, who led our own district heating workshop—a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with experts from both the research and practical fields!

Synergies between civil aviation and the defense sector from an industrial and scientific perspective

The event brings together the aviation industry, suppliers, and the scientific community. The Fraunhofer Institutes ICT and IOSB, as members of the KAMO Competence Center, invite representatives of the aerospace industry to the Karlsruhe Research Factory.

As the main enabler of the event, we were able to showcase OCTAS Simulation, a framework for simulating mobility systems, automation, robotics, and AI. It is based on an open, highly modular framework that allows virtually any aspect of the simulation to be added or modified via plugins.

ICRA is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). It brings together researchers and industry professionals from around the world to exchange ideas and knowledge and to advance robotics for the benefit of humanity.

🤖 Once again this year, we are co-organizing the workshops:

Challenge by "Workshop on Field Robotics"

As was the case last year, this is a competition focused on data segmentation using the GOOSE dataset. This year, we are focusing on "fine-grained segmentation." We are using 56 segmentation classes instead of last year's 11 to evaluate the segmentation at a finer granularity.

Challenge by "Workshop on Open Challenges for Rigorous Robot Perception"

In this workshop, we aim to examine the current state of robot perception and discuss what is still needed to achieve these capabilities for a rigorous robot perception system. 

👉 On the organizing committee: Miguel Granero und Raphael Hagmanns.