The scientific team of the Institute of Process Control and Robotics performs research in the fields of industrial automation and computer aided therapy both focusing on robotics.

Research in the field of industrial automation comprises conception and realisation of sensor based autonomous robots for typical tasks in production i.e. assembly, manipulation, inspection, measuring, and testing. Main issues are collision free motion planning for different robot control systems and algorithms for model based robot calibration. New methods for intuitive and automatic offline-programming of robots are developed as well. Special stress is laid on human robot co-operation integrating multiple sensors and using several co-operation levels. A special challenge is the usage of sensor based co-operative micro robots with direct drives achieving an accuracy of 20 nm in a FEM. One research team designs modular control and diagnosis systems for robots, robot cells and plants i.e. based on multi-agent architectures. We use case based, signal based and model based methods for service and diagnosis of robotic systems. Further research comprises planning and simulation of the digital plant.

The coming operating theatre and virtual robot assisted surgery are main issues of our computer aided surgery research programme. This comprises sensor based surgical robots, flexible endoscopes, and visualisation systems for the coming surgical workplace. Methods for modelling and simulating anatomical structures, especially bony tissue and soft tissue close to bones are emphasised. These methods are basis for our operation planning systems supporting the surgical intervention as well as the planning of the sequential flow of an intervention.