My research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the visual and audio-visual perception of humans and their activities, in order to build perceptive human-friendly systems.
I am particularly interested in building complete human-friendly systems, such as human-friendly robots, smart environment and assistive technology for people with visual impairments. I'm also interested in automatic analysis of multimedia content and video surveillance applications.
My team and I have been working on a number of perception components including person tracking, person identification, recognition of pointing gestures, estimation of head orientation and focus of attention, as well as audio-visual scene and activity analysis.
In addition to my research group on "Computer Vision for Human-Computer Interaction (CV-HCI)" at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (formerly Universität Karlsruhe (TH)), I'm head of the KIT's Study Center for Visually Impaired Students (SZS)".
I also closely collaborate with the Perceptual User Interfaces research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation - IOSB in Karlsruhe.
I'm co-founder of Videmo Intelligente Videoanalyse GmbH Co. KG. Videmo develops innovative software and algorithms for automatic video analysis in a wide range of application areas such as security, customer analysis, traffic monitoring and health care.