Speakers

Dr. Andreas Kuhn studied Technical Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Vienna. After his dissertation on the simulation of special satellite formations for the European Space Agency, he began his professional career in crash simulation at BMW. After further years as a consultant for stochastic simulation at EASI Engineering GmbH (today carhs), he founded ANDATA in 2004, where he is responsible for development and research as managing partner. Since 2009 he has also been co-owner of Automotive Safety Technologies GmbH in Gaimersheim. His professional interests are founded in effective and efficient development, validation and assessment methods for complex, safety-critical systems. In particular, he has been working for more than 20 years on the development and combined application of methods from the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced simulation methods, scenario-based approaches and according process models in the virtual development of vehicles and autonomous robots. His current activities are the development and implementation of cooperative, networked, automated driving strategies for effective traffic automation.

Dr. Marina Martínez leads simulation tasks in ADAS projects at Porsche Engineering, and is one of the drivers of the Porsche Engineering Virtual ADAS Testing Centre (PEVATeC). She holds a PhD in Intelligent Hybrid Electric Vehicles and an MSc in Automotive Mechatronics from Cranfield University, where she is a currently guest lecturer. After three years at AVL Powertrain UK working on intelligent energy management, in 2017 she joined Porsche Engineering Services GmbH to change the focus to ADAS development in simulation. Shortly after PEVATeC was initiated and currently plays an important role in virtual ADAS functions and AI development in VW Concern projects.

Andre Seeck is head of the division "Vehicle Technology" with the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt). In this position he is responsible for the preparation of European Safety Regulations. Furthermore he represents the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure in the Board of Directors of Euro NCAP and he is the chairman of the strategy group on automated driving and of the rating system. These positions enable him to gain deep insight into current and future developments in vehicle safety. In 2017 NHTSA awarded him the U. S. Government Special Award of Appreciation.

Caius Seiger studied Computer Science at the University of Paderborn and is now product manager for Sensor Simulation at dSPACE. His goal is to simulate entire autonomous vehicles. In addition to the accurate representation of vehicle dynamics, this includes sensor data for camera, radar and lidar sensors. The challenge is to set up a platform for the integration of 3-D models of the environment and vehicles, and to provide parameterizable sensor models. In addition, the tools involved have to be able to run in parallel in the cloud, and in real time on HIL test benches.

Franz Wotawa is professor of software engineering at the Graz University of Technology and the head of the Institute for Software Technology. His research interests include model-based and qualitative reasoning, theorem proving, mobile and autonomous systems, verification and validation, and software testing and debugging. Beside theoretical foundations, he has always been interested in closing the gap between research and practice. Starting from October 2017, Franz Wotawa is the head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Quality Assurance Methodologies for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems. During his career Franz Wotawa has written more than 390 peer-reviewed papers for journals, books, conferences, and workshops. He supervised 90 master and 36 PhD students. For his work on diagnosis, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Intl. Diagnosis Community in 2016. Franz Wotawa has been member of a various number of program committees and organized several workshops and special issues of journals. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, the Austrian Computer Society (OCG), and the Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence and a Senior Member of the AAAI.