Projects – Institute of Systems Engineering – Leibniz University Hannover

UAV getragene Sensorik zur KI-basierten Unterstützung von Rettungsmissionen

Catastrophic events such as explosions, natural disasters or terrorist attacks often lead to severe structural damage to buildings and tunnels. In the act, people might get buried or trapped. Due to tremendous time pressure, search and rescue teams promptly require an overview of damaged and close-to-collapse sites in order to locate and recover missing persons timely without endangering their lives. For this task, the UAV-Rescue project aims at developing a UAV-based sensor system. This system can be deployed in buildings or tunnels for the acquisition of a complete 3D indoor map as well as the detection of potential vital signs.

Led by: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernardo Wagner

Team: Julian Kunze, Jan Michel Rotter

Year: 2021

Funding: BMBF

Duration: 2021-2023

MOBILISE - Mobility in Engineering and Science

Especially for the state of Lower Saxony, the future of mobility is a key issue. The "MOBILISE - Mobility in Engineering and Science" research initiative lays the foundations for further mobility research and, in particular, promotes interdisciplinary cooperation since future innovations can be expected especially at the borders between the various disciplines. Mobilise includes several research initiatives, "Mobile Human" is one of them. Together with the Institute of Microelectronic and Architectures for Machine Learning based Real Time Sensor Data Fusion.

Led by: M. Sc. Sebastian Kleinschmidt, M. Sc. Johannes Paehr

Year: 2016

DFG Research Training Group - Integrity and Collaboration in dynamic SENSor networks (i.c.sens)

The Research Training Group GRK2159 (i.c.sens) will investigate concepts for ensuring the integrity of collaborative systems in dynamic sensor networks. Currently, collaborative and autonomous systems are entering every day live, like e.g., in flexible factory automation, through service and home robotics, or as autonomous vehicles. Consequently, these systems are close to or even in direct interaction with humans yielding new risks. In order to prevent damage and accidents, the systems should detect failures and warn timely their vicinity, i.e. guarantee the integrity of their correct operation, in particular the integrity of their navigation information. In addition, an increasing number of co-existing autonomous systems enables collaboration and cooperation but calls for coordination.

Led by: M. Sc. Raphael Voges, M. Sc. Aaronkumar Ehambram

Year: 2016

Automated Driving in Industrial Environments

In many industrial areas, cars are driven manually through the environment. However, the proportion of electronic components in vehicles is increasing steadily, and thus most actuators can already be controlled electronically. Nevertheless not all cars have appropriate sensors to let them drive automatically. This project aims to investigate how the vehicles can be retrofitted with a mobile sensor unit and an automatic drive in an industrial environment can be realized.

Led by: M. Sc. Patrick Hemme, M. Sc. Sebastian Kleinschmidt, M. Sc. Jan Carstensen

Year: 2016

Duration: 2016 - 2019

SmokeBot

Starting in January 2015, SmokeBot is a project funded by the EU within the scope of the Horizon 2020 program. It is being realized together with partners from Sweden, Austria and United Kingdom, as well as Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques. The aim of SmokeBot is to improve the environment perception of mobile robots in scenarios with low visibility. L3S is responsible for research topics like sensor data fusion (light based sensors and radar), thermography, (hazard) situation analysis and information modeling.

Led by: M. Sc. Paul Fritsche, M. Sc. Björn Zeise, M. Sc. Patrick Hemme

Year: 2015

USBV-Inspektor

As part of the USBV-Inspektor project, L3S develops a multimodal sensor-suite together with the North Rhine-Westphalia State Office of Criminal Investigation, Fraunhofer FHR, ELP GmbH and Hentschel System GmbH. This sensor-suite consists of a millimetre wave scanner, a 3D rangescanner and a high-resolution camera. The system perceives the internal and external geometry and generates high definition images of suspicious objects to support the local action force and collect additional evidence.

Led by: Dipl.-Ing. Christian Wieghardt, M. Sc. Sebastion Kleinschmidt

Year: 2014

Realtime-Linux: Xenomai, RTnet, RACK

Our institute's research and developement is based on Linux Realtime Extension. Xenomai Further development of this Open-Source-Projekt is actively supported. In this context, RTS contributed offering the Real-Time-Driver Model (RTDM) as well as numerous driver units.

Year: 2014

Robotic FireFighters

Recent disasters, such as the Fukushima catastrophe, the attack on the WTC, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire, have shown that post disaster management tasks still require considerable human intervention, even though the humans entering affected areas risk their health and lives, causing human tragedy and immense cost for national economies. With view to keeping these dangers and costs at bay, and to increasing effectiveness of disaster management operations, our long-term vision is that teams of autonomous robots equipped with sensors, manipulators, and communication capabilities will be able to enter dangerous, polluted or contaminated areas and to manage all the necessary tasks (e.g. search for survivors, evacuate injured persons, remove safety critical materials, clean up) without the need for explicit human assistance. This inspires the notion of Robotic FireFighters (RFF), in analogy to human fire brigades, where firemen (and firewomen) work together towards the common goal of getting a disaster under control.

Year: 2013

Navigation of Autonomous Systems in Outdoor Environments

Service robots autonomously mow greens and pull out weeds in large parks or sports facilities. Tourists are most comfortably brought to the respective places of interest or accompanied on a fair. Disabled persons and elderly people find help in dealing with everyday routines. There are countless examples like the aforementioned ones, when service robots support individuals. To be able to solve the given tasks effciently the robot always has to know his present location thus constantly looking for the answer to the question: "Where am I?".

Year: 2010

Autonomous forklift - a Revolution of the Factory Floor

The Realtime Systems Group (RTS) of the Leibniz Universität Hannover cooperates with the STILL GmbH in order to facilitate flexible navigation and materials handling. An overriding aim of the project is to reduce costs by using flexible automated materials handling vehicles – both in warehouse and production facilities. Economic gains can be expected, for example, by considerably reducing the risk of accidentally dropping material or misplaced goods. Furthermore, little or no infrastructure changes (such as track guides) are necessary. The possibilities for an autonomous forklift truck are enormous, since the transition between manual and automated operation can be optimised. Futhermore, the transport processes can be reproduced – even those in which a high degree of care is needed when positioning.

Year: 2008

Scalable Processing Box

Increasingly complex robotic projects in research and teaching require the development of a standardized and scalable processing platform which can be used not only as basis for lectures and internships but also for research projects. The Scalable Processing Box (SPB) is designed to offer a flexible possibility for students and researchers to work in the area of robotics without having to worry about basic process infrastructure which they only wanted to use as a tool for their work. Object is, to standardize SPB with regard to hand- and software so that despite of using processor cores with different performance and architecture the same Lock-and-Feel can always be achieved. Thus, it should be possible to realize simple low level projects for student beginners as well as complex applications for research projects (e.g. doctor theses).

Year: 2004

3D-Laserscanner

To obtain 3D environmental data the Institute for Systems Engineering has developed a continuously rotating 3D scanner consisting of a Scan Drive system especially designed for this application and a SICK laser scanner. The sensor can be used on mobile robot platforms for environmental perception and navigation. It can take a complete picture of its surroundings every 2 seconds with more than 13,000 measuring points to be taken into account every second. These points are synchronized with the angle of the rotation 2D scanner and the actual position and location of the robot to generate accurate 3D data even during the robot's journey. Evaluation of the data obtained is performed via a Scalable Processing Box (SPB) on the basis of our robot operating system. Using this real time operating system it is possible to avoid systematic measurement errors which usually occur due to runtime differences during data processing.

Year: 2003

Research Projects