Consortium Partners

The Social Robotics Laboratory (SRL) within the Computer Science Department of the University of Freiburg is headed by Kai Arras. The lab is concerned with techniques for perception, learning, estimation, and planning in the context of socially enabled cognitive systems. Within SPENCER, SRL develops techniques for detecting, tracking and analyzing people and groups of people as well as learning human behavior models for socially-aware motion and interaction planning.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Range-based people and group tracking (WP4, WP3), Perception and learning (WP2, WP4), Human activity modeling (WP5), System specification and integration (WP1), Management (WP8)

The TUM Computer Vision Group, headed by Prof. Dr. Daniel Cremers, is focused on a range of topics in computer vision, image analysis and pattern recognition. Over the years, the group has developed novel convex optimization methods to solve a number of problems including image segmentation, image denoising, image-based 3D reconstruction, shape matching and optical flow estimation.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Unsupervised object detection (WP2), Online estimation of dynamic objects (WP2), 3D mapping and SLAM (WP2).

The Human Media Interaction group is part of Computer Science and consists of about 10 senior researchers and 20 PhD students. The focus of the group is on intelligent multimodal human computer interaction.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Social signal processing (WP2), Human-robot interaction (WP4 and WP6), User experience evaluation (WP4 and WP6), Cross-cultural human robot interaction (WP4 and WP6).

The AASS Mobile Robotics and Olfaction Lab is coordinated by Prof. Achim J. Lilienthal. The focus of this lab is generally on perception systems for mobile robots that operate in an unconstrained, dynamic environments. The approaches developed address real-world needs and are typically characterized by fusion of different sensor modalities. Where possible, research results are timely integrated in industrial demonstrators. Within SPENCER, the work at the AASS MRO lab will be dedicated to problems related to localization in dynamic environments and the creation of maps that indicate where different types of social behaviors occur.

Competences Related to SPENCER: SLAM in dynamic environments (WP2), Semantic mapping (WP2), Navigation (WP5), 3D perception (WP2).

Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecturedes Systemes (LAAS) is a laboratory of CNRS, the French National Organisation for Scientific Research. It is associated with three University institutions in Toulouse: UPS, INSA, and INP. LAAS has a permanent staff of over 320, together with (on average) 260 doctorate students. Research at LAAS covers Automatic Control, Computer Science and Engineering, and Microelectronics. The Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Department, the largest in France (25 staff, 50 PhD students, and 7 post-docs), is active in research on intelligent and autonomous robotic systems. The team is composed of members from the Robotics and Interactions group.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Human-aware motion planning (WP5), Decisional issues in Human-robot interaction (WP5), Architectures for cognitive and interactive robots (WP1 and WP5), Software system specification and integration (WP6).

RWTH is represented by the Computer Vision group headed by Prof. Dr. Bastian Leibe, which is part of the chair of Computer Science 8, Computer Graphics and Multimedia. The group is focusing on computer vision applications for mobile devices and robotics platforms and has gained substantial experience in visual object categorization, tracking, and in the interface between recognition and 3D reconstruction. Particular emphasis is placed on real-world applicability of the developed algorithms, which is an important prerequisite for robotics applications.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Computer vision (WP2 and WP3), Object recognition (WP2), Visual tracking (WP2), Figure-ground segmentation (WP3), Body pose estimation and articulated tracking (WP3).

BlueBotics SA is a spin-off company of the Autonomous Systems Lab, EPFL. Founded in 2001 with the mission to market innovative and promising mobile robotics technologies, the company is now active in two segments based on autonomous navigation solutions: Automation and service robotics. With its portfolio, BlueBotics SA belongs to the most experienced companies in Europe when it comes to the specification, design and deployment of complex interactive robots in real-world environments.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Robot design (WP1), System integration (WP1), Exploitation and technology transfer (WP7), Navigation (WP5).

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is a worldwide airline company based in the Netherlands. KLM operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to more than 90 destinations. It is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name and has around 33,000 employees. It comprises the core of the KLM Group, which further includes KLM Cityhopper, transavia.com and Martinair. KLM works very closely with Air France within the AIR FRANCE KLM Group, which exists since the two companies merged in 2004. The AIR FRANCE KLM Group is Europe's leading Group in the Airline business.

Competences Related to SPENCER: Aviation industry end-user (WP1), Exploitation, public relations and dissemination (WP7).