International Robotics Colloquium in Oberpfaffenhofen
The new DLR Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC) and its pioneer Prof. Dr. Hirzinger
On November 21, 2011, the International Robotics Colloquium opened at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen. The DLR Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC) also introduced itself for the first time at the event. Guests from politics and industry as well as the world’s most renowned technology leaders, scientists, and pioneers in robotics gathered for this event.
For two days, leading robotics researchers had the opportunity to share their visions and ideas at the colloquium. The motto “Challenges in Robotics: Down to Earth” allowed them room to analyze and discuss current questions as well as future possible robotics applications. They always kept the authoritative experiences and results of several decades of robotics research in mind.
There is a special reason for this as Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerd Hirzinger, Director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, will retire from his position in 2012 after more than 40 years of top-level research at DLR. The colloquium took this as an opportunity to look back at past achievements and to derive future challenges for robotics research.
DLR Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC)
Society and industry can no longer be imagined without robotics. Faster and more reliable robots are not only used in industrial production to remain internationally competitive. Robots that are safe and easy to handle are also in demand wherever people need to be protected from specific hazardous situations, for example in space travel, underwater, or rescue missions.
For decades, DLR’s Oberpfaffenhofen site with its Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics has been Germany’s most highly recognized address worldwide for applied robotics research. The institute is characterized by its interdisciplinary core competence. This applies, for example, to the close integration of space robotics with applications that are also used on Earth in industrial robotics, service robotics, vehicle technology, and surgery.
The expansion of the institute into a globally unique Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC) has been funded since 2010 by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in coordination with the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport, and Technology. The RMC is integrated in a robotics network through national and international partnerships. The aim is to be able to perform higher-level research and development tasks with a view to Europe.
End of an era: Institute Director Prof. Dr Hirzinger
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerd Hirzinger is one of the worldwide pioneers of robotics. In his career to date, the director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics looks back on more than 600 publications and guest lectures in the fields of robotics, mechatronics, telerobotics, and surgery. He has also received a number of national and international awards and honors – most recently, in 2010, he received the rare State Medal of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs for his special achievements.
Hirzinger studied electrical engineering with a specialization in communications engineering and data processing at the Technical University of Munich as a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation). After completing his studies, he joined DLR (then DFVLR) Oberpfaffenhofen as a research assistant in 1969. In 1974, he received his doctorate with a thesis on digital control. In 1991, he received a joint professorship with the Technical University of Munich and was appointed director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (then Robotics and System Dynamics) in 1992.
He achieved a spectacular breakthrough for space travel in April 1993 with the ROTEX technological experiment, the first real robot in space during the D2 mission aboard the Columbia space shuttle. Today, the institute he heads has the world’s most experience in remotely controlling robots in Earth orbit. The research facility that the new DLR Robotics and Mechatronics Center builds on is now considered an internationally renowned technology hotbed that has already created around 1,000 high-tech jobs in the field of mechatronics.