Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen site

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In agriculture, growth and sustainability seem to be irreconcilable. Artificial intelligence can help resolve this contradiction. The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen is working with the agricultural sector to develop a robot that will efficiently and sustainably work the fields in the future.

Robots can already assist humans with some everyday tasks. But they are out of their depth when faced with unfamiliar environments or even small deviations in the tasks they are trained to perform. To help them learn to adapt more quickly to new circumstances, Michael Mühlebach and Jörg Stückler’s research groups at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen are developing new training methods for the machines. Their robots even have to prove themselves by engaging in table tennis or body flight.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been able to recognize patterns much better than humans can. However, in order to truly be worthy of its name, it would also need to understand causal relationships. And that is precisely what researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen are working on.

In the future, it will be more and more common for computers to make decisions about human beings – whether they are granting loans or assessing applicants. However, it happens occasionally that the automated systems that are already in use discriminate against certain groups of people. Niki Kilbertus and Bernhard Schölkopf, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen, want to change this by developing fair algorithms.

As domestic help, healthcare assistants or emergency response units: robots are suitable for these jobs only if they are capable of learning and acting independently, at least to a certain extent. Stefan Schaal and the members of his Autonomous Motion Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen are teaching machines to become flexible and autonomous.

A time may yet come when everyone has their own chauffeur-driven car – if robots take the wheel, that is. In order for autonomous vehicles to become a reality without huge technical outlay, however, computers will have to be able to assess complex traffic situations at least as well as drivers do. Andreas Geiger and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen are working to develop the necessary software.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems show how people perceive others and unconsciously attribute certain character traits to a person based solely on their body shape. They also found that the political affiliation of the observer influences the social perception. The judgment of others depends on both the body shape of the person being observed and the viewer’s own political preference, potentially having political and social implications. The research project aims to raise awareness of this bias. 

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen and the University of Vienna have introduced MYND, an open-source software that allows people to participate in brain-computer interaction (BCI) research from home, without expert supervision. Their research could take the field a decisive step forward: MYND can complement laboratory-based basic research with human-computer interaction experiments in a range of real life environments. The researchers are confident their approach will provide a viable basis for further research on accessible use of BCI in daily life.

In our team of researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen we show that optical flow systems based on deep neural networks – a likely component of future autonomous cars – are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. The computer vision experts are shaking up the automotive industry by warning car manufacturers around the globe that it could take a simple color pattern to put the brakes on computer vision systems in autonomous cars.

Robots as helpers in everyday life can make our lives better in the future. However, there is much research needed to get there. One problem is the hardware. It needs to withstand everyday usage without being bulky or dangerous. The bigger problem, however, is to develop the right "brain”. To come somewhere close to human skills, a robot has to learn a lot by itself. The researchers of the Autonomous Learning Group at MPI for Intelligent Systems are working on artificial curiosity and the associated learning methods so that artificial systems can improve themselves in the future.

Machine learning requires computer hardware to reliable and efficiently compute estimations for ever more complex and fundamentally incomputable quantities. A research team at MPI for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen develops new algorithms which purposely lower the precision of computations and return an explicit measure of uncertainty over the correct result alongside the estimate. Doing so allows for more flexible management of resources, and increases the reliability of intelligent systems.