The Institute of Man-Machine-Interaction belongs to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and was founded in 2006 by its head Professor Rossmann. The main focus of the institute is to bridge the gap between fields of robotics and virtual reality in order to develop, implement and apply new concepts of advanced control, man-machine-interaction and –communication.

The areas of expertise are:

• space robotics
• industrial robotics
• mobile robotics
• virtual environments
• machine vision
• autonomous vehicle guidance
• navigation
• computer graphics

as well as control theory and simulation technology in general.

New techniques of virtual reality allow to program, operate and supervise complex automated systems like:

• space robots
• humanoid robots
• forest harvesting machinery
• digital factories
• industrial robots
• production technology

or virtual training systems, e.g. for the International Space Station [ISS], building on many of the above mentioned developments.

The institute is involved in the following funded projects:

• Virtueller Wald-II (Virtual Forest-II, Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of the state North Rhine-Westphalia [MUNLV NRW])
• ROKVISS (Robotics Component Verification on ISS, German Aerospace Center [DLR])
• TECSAS (Technology Satellite for demonstration and verification of Space Systems, German Aerospace Center [DLR])
• Robot Simulation (RIF e.V.)
• Digital Factory (RIF e.V.)
• Panorama projection technologies (RIF e.V.)
• Harvester Simulation (Forest Education Center North Rhine-Westphalia [WAS NRW])
• Multi-Sensor-Integration (Forest Education Center North Rhine-Westphalia [WAS NRW])
• Remote Sensing and Modelling (German Aerospace Center [DLR])
• Geo-Databases (Forest Administration North Rhine-Westphalia [L.W.U.H. NRW])

These projects provide a profound and systematic basis for various scientific and industrial realisations of advanced control and virtual reality systems.