I am a professor for computer science at the University of Freiburg and head of the research lab for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. My areas of interest lie in artificial intelligence and mobile robots.

My research mainly focuses on the development of robust and adaptive techniques for state estimation and control. Over the past years my group and I have developed a series of innovative probabilistic techniques for robot navigation and control. They cover different aspects such as localization, map-building, SLAM, path-planning, exploration, and several other aspects.

In my previous position from 1996 to 1999 at the University of Bonn I was head of the research lab for Autonomous Mobile Systems. In 1997 we deployed Rhino as the first interactive mobile tour-guide robot in the Deutsches Museum Bonn in Germany (see corresponding overview article). In 1998 my group and I went to Washington, DC, to install the mobile robot Minerva in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Afterwards we produced several robots that autonomously operated in trade shows and Museums. In 2008, we developed an approach that allowed a car to autonomously navigate through a complex parking garage and park itself.

I have published over 150 papers and articles in robotic conferences and journals. In 2005, I co-authored two books. Whereas the first one, entitled Principles of Robot Motion - Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations, is about sensor-based planning, stochastic planning, localization, mapping, and motion planning, the second one, entitled Probabilistic Robotics, covers robot perception and control in the face of uncertainty.

In 2008, I became a Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI).

In 2009, I became a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

In 2009, I received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the most prestigious German research award.

My Erdös number is at most 4.