Technische Universität München Robotics and Embedded Systems
 

Dr. Claus Lenz

 

Research Associate

E-Mail lenz@in.tum.de
Room 0240
Phone +49.89.289.25761
Fax +49.89.289.18107
Address Institut für Informatik VI
Technische Universität München
Boltzmannstraße 3
85748 Garching bei München
Germany
Homepage  
Dr. Claus Lenz
 

Open Student Projects

Many more on request. Just write me an email!

Curriculum Vitæ

Research Interests

CoTeSys Projects

Affiliations

Videos

 

Task-based robot controller

Direct physical human-robot interaction has become a central part in the research field of robotics today. To use the advantages of the potential for humans and robots to work together as a team in industrial settings, the most important issues are safety for the human and an easy way to describe tasks for the robot. In the next video, we present an approach of a hierarchical structured control of industrial robots for joint-action scenarios. Multiple atomic tasks including dynamic collision avoidance, operational position, and posture can be combined in an arbitrary order respecting constraints of higher priority tasks. The controller flow is based on the theory of orthogonal projection using nullspaces and constraint least-square optimization.

 

Internal 3D representation

In this video one can see a visualization of the internal 3D representation used in the robotic controller to measure distances for the collision avoidance task. The 3D representation includes static and dynamic objects and is updated according to sensor data. Every sensor module can broadcast its information about the current status of unique identified objects in the workspace.

 

Learning a new building plan and Execution of previously learned building plans

In this videos, we show how our industrial robot is instructed via speech input and that the JAHIR robot is following and executing a collaborative plan that was teached-in previously using multiple input modalities.

 

Kinect enabled robot workspace surveillance

A human co-worker is tracked using a Microsoft Kinect in a human-robot collaborative scenario.

 

Interactive human-robot collaboration with Microsoft Kinect

In this video a human is interacting with the robotic assistive system JAHIR to jointly perform assembly t asks. The human is tracked using a Microsoft Kinect. Virtual Buttons in the menu guided interaction allow a dynamic and adaptive way of controlling and interacting with the robotic system. The overlay video on the upper right shows a close up of the working desk with the on-table projection for the buttons, the virtual environment representation and the menu.

 

Fusing multiple Kinects to survey shared Human-Robot-Workspaces

In today's industrial applications, robots are often strictly separated in space or time. Without surveillance of the joint workspace, a robot is unaware of unforeseen changes in its environment and can not react properly. Since robots are heavy and bulky machines, collisions may have severe consequences for the human worker. Thus, the work area must be monitored to recognize unknown obstacles in it. With the knowledge of its surroundings, the robot can be controlled to avoid collisions with any detected object. to enable direct collaboration between humans and industrial robots. Therefore, the environment is perceived by using multiple, distributed range sensors (Microsoft Kinect). The sensory data sets are decentrally pre-processed and broadcasted via the network. These data sets are then processed by additional components that segment and cluster unknown objects and publish the gained information to allow the system to react to unexpected events in the environment.

 

 

Publications

[1] Claus Lenz and Alois Knoll. Mechanisms and capabilities for human robot collaboration. In Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pages 666-671, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2014. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[2] Markus Huber, Aleksandra Kupferberg, Claus Lenz, Alois Knoll, Thomas Brandt, and Stefan Glasauer. Spatiotemporal movement planning and rapid adaptation for manual interaction. PLoS ONE, 8(5):e64982, 2013. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[3] Markus Huber, Claus Lenz, Cornelia Wendt, Berthold Färber, Alois Knoll, and Stefan Glasauer. Predictive mechanisms increase efficiency in robot-supported assembies: An experimental evaluation. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Gyengju, Korea, 2013. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[4] Jürgen Blume, Alexander Bannat, Gerhard Rigoll, Martijn Niels Rooker, Alfred Angerer, and Claus Lenz. Programming concept for an industrial hri packaging cell. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Gyengju, Korea, 2013. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[5] Aleksandra Kupferberg, Markus Huber, Bartosz Helfer, Claus Lenz, Alois Knoll, and Stefan Glasauer. Moving just like you: Motor interference depends on similar motility of agent and observer. PLoS ONE, 7(6):39637, 2012. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[6] Claus Lenz, Markus Grimm, Thorsten Röder, and Alois Knoll. Fusing multiple kinects to survey shared human-robot-workspaces. Technical Report TUM-I1214, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany, 2012. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[7] Claus Lenz, Thorsten Röder, Markus Rickert, and Alois Knoll. Distance-weighted Kalman fusion for precise docking problems. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Robots and Competitions, Lisbon, Portugal, 2011. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[8] Claus Lenz, Alice Sotzek, Thorsten Röder, Helmuth Radrich, Alois Knoll, Markus Huber, and Stefan Glasauer. Human workflow analysis using 3d occupancy grid hand tracking in a human-robot collaboration scenario. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Francisco, USA, 2011. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[9] Claus Lenz. Context-aware human-robot collaboration as a basis for future cognitive factories. Dissertation, Technische Universität München, München, 2011. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[10] Alexander Bannat, Thibault Bautze, Michael Beetz, Jürgen Blume, Klaus Diepold, Christoph Ertelt, Florian Geiger, Thomas Gmeiner, Tobias Gyger, Alois Knoll, Christian Lau, Claus Lenz, Martin Ostgathe, Gunther Reinhart, Wolfgang Rösel, Thomas Rühr, Anna Schuboe, Kristina Shea, Ingo Stork genannt Wersborg, Sonja Stork, William Tekouo, Frank Wallhoff, Mathey Wiesbeck, and Michael F. Zäh. Artificial cognition in production systems. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, PP(99):1-27, 2010. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[11] Manuel Giuliani, Claus Lenz, Thomas Müller, Markus Rickert, and Alois Knoll. Design principles for safety in human-robot interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics, 2(3):253-274, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[12] Claus Lenz, Thorsten Röder, Martin Eggers, Sikandar Amin, Thomas Kisler, Bernd Radig, Giorgio Panin, and Alois Knoll. A distributed many-camera system for multi-person tracking. In Proceedings of the 1st International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, Malaga, Spain, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[13] Christoph Staub, Claus Lenz, Giorigio Panin, and Alois Knolland Robert Bauernschmitt. Contour-based surgical instrument tracking supported by kinematicprediction. In proceedings of the IEEE/RAS International Conference on BiomedicalRobotics and Biomechatronics, pages 746-752, Tokyo, Japan, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[14] Frank Wallhoff, Jürgen Blume, Alexander Bannat, Wolfgang Rösel, Claus Lenz, and Alois Knoll. A skill-based approach towards hybrid assembly. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 24(3):329 - 339, 2010. The Cognitive Factory. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[15] Martin Wojtczyk, Giorgio Panin, Thorsten Röder, Claus Lenz, Suraj Nair, Rüdiger Heidemann, Chetan Goudar, and Alois Knoll. Teaching and implementing autonomous robotic lab walkthroughs in a biotech laboratory through model-based visual tracking. In IS&T / SPIE Electronic Imaging, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVII: Algorithms and Techniques: Autonomous Robotic Systems and Applications, San Jose, CA, USA, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[16] Claus Lenz, Giorgio Panin, Thorsten Röder, Martin Wojtczyk, and Alois Knoll. Hardware-assisted multiple object tracking for human-robot-interaction. In Francois Michaud, Matthias Scheutz, Pamela Hinds, and Brian Scassellati, editors, HRI '09: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction, pages 283-284, La Jolla, CA, USA, 2009. ACM. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[17] Claus Lenz, Markus Rickert, Giorgio Panin, and Alois Knoll. Constraint task-based control in industrial settings. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages 3058-3063, St. Louis, MO, USA, 2009. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[18] Martin Wojtczyk, Giorgio Panin, Claus Lenz, Thorsten Röder, Suraj Nair, Erwin Roth, Rüdiger Heidemann, Klaus Joeris, Chun Zhang, Mark Burnett, Tom Monica, and Alois Knoll. A vision based human robot interface for robotic walkthroughs in a biotech laboratory. In François Michaud, Matthias Scheutz, Pamela Hinds, and Brian Scassellati, editors, HRI '09: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human Robot Interaction, pages 309-310, La Jolla, CA, USA, 2009. ACM. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[19] Markus Huber, Claus Lenz, Markus Rickert, Alois Knoll, Thomas Brandt, and Stefan Glasauer. Human preferences in industrial human-robot interactions. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cognition for Technical Systems, Munich, Germany, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[20] Claus Lenz, Suraj Nair, Markus Rickert, Alois Knoll, Wolfgang Rösel, Jürgen Gast, and Frank Wallhoff. Joint-action for humans and industrial robots for assembly tasks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pages 130-135, Munich, Germany, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[21] Claus Lenz, Giorgio Panin, and Alois Knoll. A GPU-accelerated particle filter with pixel-level likelihood. In International Workshop on Vision, Modeling and Visualization (VMV), Konstanz, Germany, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[22] Thomas Müller, Claus Lenz, Simon Barner, and Alois Knoll. Accelerating integral histograms using an adaptive approach. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Image and Signal Processing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), pages 209-217, Cherbourg-Octeville, France, 2008. Springer. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[23] Giorgio Panin, Claus Lenz, Suraj Nair, Erwin Roth, Martin Wojtczyk, Thomas Friedlhuber, and Alois Knoll. A unifying software architecture for model-based visual tracking. In IS&T/SPIE 20th Annual Symposium of Electronic Imaging, San Jose, CA, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[24] Giorgio Panin, Erwin Roth, Thorsten Röder, Suraj Nair, Claus Lenz, Martin Wojtczyk, Thomas Friedlhuber, and Alois Knoll. ITrackU: An integrated framework for image-based tracking and understanding. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cognition for Technical Systems, Munich, Germany, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[25] Gunther Reinhart, Wolfgang Vogel, Wolfgang Rösel, Frank Wallhoff, and Claus Lenz. JAHIR - Joint action for humans and industrial robots. In Fachforum: Intelligente Sensorik - Robotik und Automation. Bayern Innovativ - Gesellschaft für Innovation und Wissenstransfer mbH, 2007. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]