Technical science

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence

Institutional description

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) was founded in 1988 as a non-profit public-private partnership. It has research facilities in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken and Bremen, a project office in Berlin, a Laboratory in Niedersachsen and a branch office in St. Wendel. In the field of innovative commercial software technology using Artificial Intelligence, DFKI is the leading research center in Germany. Based on application oriented basic research, DFKI develops product functions, prototypes and patentable solutions in the field of information and communication technology. Research and development projects are conducted in nineteen research departments and research groups, eight competence centers and eight living labs. Funding is received from government agencies like the European Union, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the German Federal States and the German Research Foundation (DFG), as well as from cooperation with industrial partners. Twice a year, a committee of internationally renowned experts (Scientific Advisory Board) audits the progress and results of state-funded projects. In addition, BMBF evaluates DFKI regularly. The most recent assessment was again very successfully concluded in 2016. Apart from the state governments of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Bremen, numerous renowned German and international high-tech companies from a wide range of industrial sectors are represented on the DFKI supervisory board. The DFKI model of a non-profit public-private partnership (ppp) is nationally and internationally considered a blueprint for corporate structure in the field of top-level research. DFKI is actively involved in numerous organizations representing and continuously advancing Germany as an excellent location for cutting-edge research and technology. Far beyond the country’s borders DFKI enjoys an excellent reputation for its academic training of young scientists.

Research expertise related to AI FORA

The core competence of DFKI is research on and production of innovative high tech in the range of Artificial Intelligence. DFKI has proven to be an important partner during AI FORA’s planning grant phase in developing an AI application in close cooperation with expertise from social sciences which serves the project as a proof of concept for an ongoing collaboration especially in the conceptualization of a co-creation lab in which technology experts will meet the needs and perspectives of various stakeholders.

Publications of institution (Embedded Intelligence research area)

  • Gernot Bahle, Andreas Poxrucker, George Kampis, Paul Lukowicz (2016) Incremental classifier fusion for smart societies In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia. EGOSE-16, November 22-23, St. Petersburg, Russia. Pages 35-40. ISBN 978-1-4503-4859-1 ACM New York, NY, USA.
  • Gernot Bahle, Andreas Poxrucker, George Kampis, Paul Lukowicz (2016) An Adaptive and Dynamic Simulation Framework for Incremental, Collaborative Classifier Fusion In: Digital Transformation and Global Society. International Conference Digital Transformation and Global Society (DTGS-2016) June 21-23 St. Petersburg Russia Pages 600-609 Springer International Publishing.
  • George Kampis, Paul Lukowicz (2014) Collaborative localization as a paradigm for incremental knowledge fusion In: 5th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunication. IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom-14) November 5-7. Vietri sul Mare, Italy. Pages 327-331. ISBN 978-14799-7280-7 IEEE 11.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. George Kampis

Areas of interest: Computational science, complex systems (networks, agent-based modeling), theoretical biology and evolution (evolutionary and ecological modeling, foundations, evolutionary technology), cognitive science (intentionality, agency, consciousness, comparative intelligence), philosophy of science (causality, explanation), analytical philosophy (philosophy of mind).

University of Augsburg

Institutional description

Founded in 1970, Augsburg University (http://www.uniaugsburg.de/) is one of the new modern universities in Bavaria. It has now approximately 18,000 students and is divided into eight faculties (Faculty of Applied Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Economics and Business, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Faculty of History and Philology, Faculty of Catholic Theology). Computer Science at Augsburg University stands for the combination of core informatics with applied subjects: medical informatics, engineering informatics, environmental informatics, geo informatics, economic informatics and media informatics under one roof. This broad network is a unique feature in Bavaria and in Germany. The research unit Human-Centered Multimedia (HCM) was founded in 2001 as part of the department of Computer Science at Augsburg University. The founding chair of the department is Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André, an internationally recognized top researcher in the fields “intelligent user interfaces” and “social computing” (Alcatel-Lucent Fellowship, ECCAI Fellowship, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Academy of Europe, SIGCHI Award, one of ten most influential personalities in German AI history). The members of the team have long-term experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of multimodal user interfaces, affective computing and social signal processing and conducted projects for the EU, the DFG, the BMBF and industries in this area. They have also been involved in the development of systems for social coaching, such as EU STREP TARDIS (Training young Adult’s Regulation of emotions and Development of social Interaction Skills) and BMBF EmpaT (Empathic Training Companions for Job Interviews) and developed techniques for social signal interpretation to assess the user’s social behaviors in job interview training.

Research expertise related to AI FORA

The core competence of the HCM Lab at Augsburg University lies in the exploration of new paradigms for the human-technology interaction, covering a wide range of sensors and interaction devices, including eye tracking systems, physiological sensors, touch-sensitive surfaces etc. The lab has profound experience with the development and evaluation of AI-assisted social assessment applications in the context of job interview training. Most recently, the HCM Lab has focused on the question of how to increase the transparency and interpretability of AI components – also those developed for social assessment – by personalized multimodal presentation techniques. The lab has furthermore developed a framework for cooperative machine learning called NOVA that supports active user involvement in the machine learning process. Following an interactive and exploratory workflow, the performance of a machine learning model can be improved by manual revision of the predictions, a process that uses confidence values to guide the inspection. The techniques in the area of cooperative transparent machine learning are of particular value to the co-creation lab to enable experiments with AI-based social assessment tools.

Publications of institution

  • Markus Langer, Cornelius J König, Patrick Gebhard, Elisabeth André: Dear computer, teach me manners: Testing virtual employment interview training. International Journal of Selection and Assessment 24 (4), 312-323, 2016.
  • Ionut Damian, Tobias Baur, Birgit Lugrin, Patrick Gebhard, Gregor Mehlmann, Elisabeth André: Games are Better than Books: In-Situ Comparison of an Interactive Job Interview Game with Conventional Training. Artificial Intelligence in Education 2015: 84-94
  • Alexander Heimerl, Tobias Baur, Florian Lingenfelser, Johannes Wagner and Elisabeth André: NOVA – A tool for eXplainable Cooperative Machine Learning. 8th International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2019). Best Technical Paper Award.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André

Full Professor of Computer Science (W3), Chair of Human-Centered Multimedia, Institute for Informatics, Augsburg University, Germany

Areas of Expertise: Intelligent Multimodal User Interfaces, Social Computing, Computer-Enhanced Learning Environments