December, 4, 2024, Waldkirch-Buchholz, Sia Campus
Speaker at Beyond Safety Forum @SICK
Welcome
Niels Syassen
Since 1 October 2021, Dr. Niels Syassen is the Executive Board member with responsibility for SICK AG’s Technology & Digitalization portfolio. He joined the company in 2017 and, as a member of the Management Board, has been responsible for innovations in the gas and particle analysis solutions unit since 2018. Before this, he was active in various management functions in product development for sensors at Bosch in the Automotive Electronics division and at Dräger in their Safety Technology division. Dr. Niels Syassen was born in Düsseldorf in 1977. He studied physics, specializing in lasers, optics and semiconductors at the Technical University of Munich and at Imperial College in London. He completed his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in 2008.
Simplicity in safety - The future of safe collaborative robotics
As robotics enters new industries and applications making automation accessible to anyone, simplicity in safety is increasingly important. This talk explores how close technical partnerships such as the Universal Robots – SICK partnership can unlock innovation to make safety simpler and we discuss what lies beyond.
Anders Billesø Beck (Universal Robots A/S)
Anders Billesø Beck is Vice President of Technology at Universal Robots, leading technology, innovation, and redefining automation on a global scale. He joined Universal Robots in 2018 as Technology Innovation Lab Manager. In 2019 he was appointed Head of Innovation, before assuming his current role in 2021. Anders holds a PhD degree in Robotics from Danish Technological Institute. After his graduation he worked at the institute in leading roles, amongst others as Head of Flexible Industrial Robotics and Head of Industrial Robotics and Automation.
Bridging high-performance AI and safety-critical use-cases
– a multi-modal perception approach to off-road autonomy
This presentation will discuss some of the challenges related to off-road environment perception for autonomous mobile machinery. In particular, it will cover the driveblocks approach to ensure robust and reliable perception with a combination of camera and LIDAR sensors. This is achieved by a combination of AI-based and geometrically interpretable algorithms in conjunction with a probabilistic sensor-fusion approach. The talk will go into detail on how this approach allows to tackle some of the unique characteristics of off-highway machinery, e.g. complex three-dimensional ground geometries, rare object detection, overhanging objects, and harsh operating conditions.
Alexander Wischnewski (driveblocks GmbH)
Dr. Alexander Wischnewski is responsible for the product strategy of the driveblocks autonomy platform and its overall design and architecture. Prior to driveblocks, he was the team leader and system architect of the winning Indy Autonomous Challenge team of the Technical University of Munich. In addition, he designed vehicle motion control systems during his time as a research assistant at the Chair of Automatic Control and has a strong background in software engineering and robotic systems implementation.
Automotive Product Safety – How to deal with the increasing complexity
The increasing use of electrical/electronic systems lead to the publication of ISO 26262 “Road vehicles – Functional Safety” in 2011. While this standard focuses on malfunctional behavior of E/E systems, other aspects of automotive product safety became more and more important: The intended functionality (SOTIF), electrification, artificial intelligence (AI), automated driving, intended manipulation (security), distributed systems. Besides a lot of new safety standards also the corresponding regulations are increasing.
This presentation gives an overview over this increasing complexity and what this means for product development and release. It shows approaches how to deal with this, for example by the use of MBSE, integrated safety analyses, or virtual release.
Stefan Kriso (Robert Bosch GmbH)
After his studies of physics, Dipl.-Phys. Stefan Kriso joined in 1995 the Bosch group. In different positions, he dealt with questions about hardware and software development. Within the Corporate Research and Advanced Engineering area, he led from 2004 until 2011 a project with the task to represent Bosch in the national and international standardization boards of ISO 26262 as well as to coordinate of the Bosch-wide rollout of ISO 26262. Since 2011, he is the head of the Bosch Center of Competence “Vehicle Safety“. Besides a couple of memberships in program committees of the most important conferences regarding ISO 26262, he is member of the German ISO 26262 working group (VDA NA052-00-32-08-01 AK) and leader of the ZVEI Ad-hoc working group ISO 26262.
Since 2005, Stefan Kriso holds a part-time lectureship for physics at the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart.
From safety to resilience through AI-based reasoning
This talk explores the transformative journey from safety to resilience in complex systems through AI-based reasoning, starting with an overview of the history of DLR robotics and safety activities. We then focus on the application of digital twins, which leverage AI to provide real-time, predictive insights, enabling systems to anticipate risks and adapt to unforeseen challenges. The talk concludes with a glimpse into the AI-based robotics quality label initiative by the BMWK that aims to increase trust in Europen robots beyond safety standards.
Daniel Leidner (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt DLR)
Dr. Daniel Leidner began his career at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with his Diploma and Master's thesis in 2009-2010. He joined the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics as a research scientist in 2011. By 2016, he became the coordinator of the Rollin' Justin humanoid robot team. Dr. Leidner later led the Semantic Planning group and the Fault-Tolerant Autonomy Architectures group. He earned his doctorate in AI and Robotics from the University of Bremen in 2017, graduating summa cum laude, and received the Georges Giralt PhD Award for the best doctoral thesis in robotics in Europe, as well as the Helmholtz Award for Doctoral Students. In 2019, he was named an Innovator Under 35 by Technology Review Germany for his work in AI and robotics. From October 2023 to July 2024, he served as a robotics consultant to the German government, shaping national AI-based robotics strategy. Since October 2024, he holds a collaboration professorship in Cognitive Robotics Manipulation at the University of Bremen, which also includes leading the Department of Autonomy and Teleoperation at DLR.
Engineering Safe Systems with AI
Technology is expected to solve more and more complex tasks – especially with the ongoing success story of AI. Unfortunately, when this expectation is applied to safety-critical systems many unresolved challenges remain. This talk will explore two key aspects when AI and safety-critical systems meet: safety aspects of systems including AI-based components and how to leverage AI to support engineers with the increasingly complex development and assurance process.
Karsten Roscher (Fraunhofer IKS)
Karsten Roscher is a computer scientist at heart and an engineer by choice. With over a decade of research experience in connected mobility, advanced driver assistance systems and machine learning for computer vision and communication systems he is a strong advocate for safe intelligence and the ongoing efforts to reconcile the need for safety with the seemingly unpredictable nature of machine learning. In 2020, he took over as head of the Dependable Perception & Imaging department at Fraunhofer IKS supporting customers and partners in the development of reliable perception systems in the automotive, rail, automation, and medical domain. Drawing lots of inspiration from the various domains, in 2024 he shifted his full attention to the specific challenges of reliable data processing in the context of industrial automation with his new department focusing on Industrial Sensing Systems. Karsten is an author of numerous scientific publications and active in both German and European standardization bodies.
Live Podcast on AI & Safety
The Industrial AI Podcast reports weekly on the latest developments in AI and Machine Learning for the engineering, robotics, automotive, process, machine building and automation industries. The podcast features industrial users, scientists, vendors and startups in the field of Industrial AI and Machine Learning. The podcast is hosted by Peter Seeberg, Industrial AI consultant and Robert Weber, tech journalist. In addition to the podcast, the two regularly meet with their listeners at their events “AI in the Alps” or “AI at the Danube”
Peter Seeberg & Robert Weber (The Industrial AI Podcast)
Peter Seeberg is Dutch and lives near Munich. He is an Industrial AI and machine learning expert for the manufacturing industry. He worked over 25 years in IT (Intel) and 10 years in Automation. He co-initiated the Industrial Data Intelligence Startup (Softing) where he was responsible for managing machine learning projects in industrial environments. Today he advises companies when it comes to Industrial AI and machine learning. Together with Robert Weber, a journalist for industrial topics, he discusses AI and ML applications, standards, and education topics, make or buy decisions as well as regulation for AI in manufacturing. Robert lives in Würzburg. He was editor in chief for different trade magazines in Germany. Since 2016 he runs his own company.
