Alois Christian Knoll (born 19 March 1961 in Stuttgart) is

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus ( ...

and professor at the

TUM Department of Informatics The TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT) is a school of the Technical University of Munich, established in 2022 by the merger of three former departments. As of 2022, it is structured into the Department of Mathematics, the ...

at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

(TUM). He is head of the Chair of

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

and

Real-Time Systems Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constrain ...

and known for seminal contributions to Human–Robot-Interaction,

Neurorobotics Neurorobotics is the combined study of neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It is the science and technology of embodied autonomous neural systems. Neural systems include brain-inspired algorithms (e.g. connectionist networks), compu ...

and

Autonomous Systems An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history t ...

Biography

Alois Knoll received his diploma in electrical engineering/

communications engineering Telecommunications Engineering is a subfield of electrical engineering which seeks to design and devise systems of communication at a distance. The work ranges from basic circuit design to strategic mass developments. A telecommunication enginee ...

from the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wi ...

in 1985. In 1988, he received his doctorate summa cum laude from the

Technical University of Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

. He was a member of the Department of Computer Science of the TU Berlin from 1985 to 1993 and received his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...

in computer science in 1993. He was then appointed full professor at

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization ...

, where he was the founding director of the Computer Engineering Group (Chair) until 2001. Between 2001 and 2004, he was a group leader and a member of the steering committee of the Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems FhG-AIS. Since 2001, he has been a professor at the Department of Computer Science at the

. In 2009, he was co-founder and from then on scientific director of the state research institute fortiss until 2018. Between 2007 and 2009 he was a member of ISTAG, the Information Society Technologies Advisory Group, the he EU's highest ICT advisory committee. He was also a member of the ISTAG's subcommittee on Future and Emerging Technologies, the working group that defined the European flagship projects and a co-author of that group's initial report. From 2011 to 2021, he was Program Principal Investigator at TUMCREATE in Singapore and head of the Area-Interlinking Design Analysis group. Between 2017 and 2021 he was a visiting professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering (SCSE) at

Nanyang Technological University The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various in ...

NTU in Singapore. Since 2013, he has been leading the

subproject of the European

ICT ICT may refer to: Sciences and technology * Information and communications technology * Image Constraint Token, in video processing * Immunochromatographic test, a rapid immunoassay used to detect diseases such as anthrax * In-circuit test, in ...

flagship project

Human Brain Project The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a large ten-year scientific research project, based on exascale supercomputers, that aims to build a collaborative ICT-based scientific research infrastructure to allow researchers across Europe to advance knowle ...

HBP and has led the development of the Neurorobotics Platform of the HBP, which is part of EBRAINS, the digital research infrastructure, created by the HBP. From 2019 to 2020, he was also

Chief Digital Officer A chief digital officer (CDO) or a chief digital information officer (CDIO) is an individual who helps a company, a government organization or a city drive growth by converting traditional "analog" businesses to digital ones using the potential of ...

Siemens Mobility Siemens Mobility GmbH is a separately-managed company of Siemens, arising from a corporate restructuring effective 1 August 2018. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens Mobility has four core business units: Mobility Management, ded ...

Intelligent Traffic Systems.

Research

Knoll's substantial contributions to Human-Robot-Interaction include the development of concepts, theories and–for proving their engineering significance–real robot systems that allowed the fusion of human communication modalities, including natural language, speech, vision and finger pointing as well as gaze, in order to enable to robot to "cognize" and reason about the intention of the human. He also introduced user-studies to explore the effects of robot behavior on humans and on optimal human-robot cooperation patterns, but also to find out how insights from neuroscience can be used to make robots learn faster and how they can be designed to interact with humans in order to maximize efficient cooperation. This work paved the way for a great number of ensuing projects dedicated to advanced human-robot cooperation heavily based on large sensor sets,

sensor data fusion Sensor fusion is the process of combining sensor data or data derived from disparate sources such that the resulting information has less uncertainty than would be possible when these sources were used individually. For instance, one could potenti ...

and advanced

cognitive skill Cognitive skills, also called cognitive functions, cognitive abilities or cognitive capacities, are brain-based skills which are needed in acquisition of knowledge, manipulation of information and reasoning. They have more to do with the mechanisms ...

s. Specialising in the field of cognitive robotics and AI integration, he was a proposer/co-proposer of the biggest and most advanced research projects in Europe, has published more than 900 peer-reviewed papers, educated thousands of students, and supervised 80 PhD students to date. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals in the field, and he is editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Neurorobotics. Together with

George A. Bekey George A. Bekey (born 1928) is an American roboticist and the Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Bekey was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1928 befo ...

, in 1999, he initiated the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

conference series on humanoid robotics and was the program chair of the first conference Humanoids2000. With Toshio Fukuda and others, he helped create the IEEE conference series on Cyborgs and Bionic systems. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and an IEEE Fellow.

Selected publications

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References

External links

Alois C. Knoll at TUM

Alois C. Knoll' research group at TUM

Google Scholar Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knoll, Alois Christian 1961 births Living people Scientists from Stuttgart German computer scientists Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich University of Stuttgart alumni Technical University of Berlin alumni Bielefeld University alumni