Dr. Alexander Dieter Kleiner
Expert on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
“Technology has never been as fast-paced as it is today. My goal at Bosch is to use the latest developments in AI and robotics to derive added value for people's everyday lives.”
My work always focused on topics around AI and robotics. Either in academia or industry. In Academia, I completed my doctorate, post-doctoral degree and habilitation in this area. In industry, I worked in Los Angeles, California at iRobot on the Roomba and Terra robots, and at FaceMap I developed deep learning solutions. To date, I have published almost 100 papers and designed more than a dozen successful robot systems taking first place at international competitions. I was an Executive at RoboCup, General Chair and PC Chair of the IEEE SSRR Symposium, and regularly work as an Associate Editor at the AAMAS, IROS and ICRA conferences.
Curriculum vitae
- President Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, FaceMap LLC, AI Deartment, Malibu, CA (USA)
- Senior Principal Robotics Scientist with Technology Lead, iRobot, Technology Organization, Pasadena, CA (USA)
- Habilitation and Associate Professor, Linköping University, Artificial Intelligence & Integrated Computer Systems, Linköping (Sweden)
- Post-doctoral Research Associate, Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (USA)
- Doctoral Degree and Assistant Professor, University of Freiburg, Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (Germany)
Selected publications
Kleiner, A. (2018)
- AI Magazine, 39(2), 89-91
Kleiner et al. (2017)
- A. Kleiner, R. Baravalle, A. Kolling, P. Pilotti, and M. Munich
- In Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots & Systems (IROS). Vancouver, Canada, pp. 5346-5352
Kolling et al. (2017)
- Andreas Kolling, Alexander Kleiner, Stefano Carpin
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), pp. 1-15
Dornhege et al. (2016)
- Christian Dornhege, Alexander Kleiner, Andreas Hertle, and Andreas Kolling
- Journal of Field Robotics, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 537-558
Interview with Dr. Alexander Dieter Kleiner
Director of Robotic Systems
Please tell us what fascinates you most about research.
I have been fascinated by artificial intelligence since my childhood. This curiosity led to my first thesis in the late 1990s which concerned teaching autonomous driving to a Khepera robot using reinforcement learning and neuronal networks. Nowadays, I am fascinated by the incredible advances which are made every day in my field. This opens the door to a host of new possibilities and challenges which will have a direct influence on our lives.
What makes research done at Bosch so special?
There is a lot going on at Bosch with many “things” already existing today, and a great deal of competence when it comes to building new “things”. This provides a challenge for developing innovative algorithms which merge these things and make their interplay even smarter.
What research topics are you currently working on at Bosch?
In my position as Director of Robotic Systems, I am in charge of Robotics at Bosch Research in Renningen. Scientists in my department develop solutions based on AI and robotics for various areas of life: e.g. for autonomous lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners, self-driving and self-organizing shuttles in intralogistics, and large and fully-automatic container trucks in ports.
What are the biggest scientific challenges in your field of research?
Today, one enormous challenge is to scale-up intelligent systems towards multi-task solvers. While there are many outstanding problem-specific solvers, there are practically no systems available which are capable of handling a wide variety of diverse problems at the same time. Today’s systems solve tasks such as playing chess, mowing lawns and vacuum cleaning. But there is no general solution for board games or household cleaning, i.e. systems which are capable of handling complex situations in a creative manner.
How do the results of your research become part of solutions "Invented for life"?
Artificial intelligence methods, such as those we develop for household robots, for example, simplify the human machine interface on the one hand while facilitating everyday tasks for humans on the other. A few years ago, I collaborated with a team to develop software which allowed users to have certain rooms in their homes (e.g. the kitchen) cleaned by a robot using voice commands. This software has meanwhile been used more than 100 million times by people all over the world and has become part of their everyday lives.
Get in touch with me
Dr. Alexander Dieter Kleiner
Director of Robotic Systems
