Developing and Evaluating Intelligent Systems

How can intelligent technical systems be systematically designed, integrated and further developed? The research addresses software architectures and development methods, including how system requirements can be translated into suitable technical solutions. Dependencies between components and their effects on system behavior are also examined.

AI methods are considered as part of an overall system comprising software and hardware components. What are the consequences of changing individual components, and how can existing systems be adapted to new tasks or operating conditions? New architectures and development methods are designed, implemented, and tested in practical applications to compare their capabilities and limitations.

Selected Research Projects

MANNHEIM-CeCaS: Central Car Server – Supercomputing für Automotive
BMBF · 2022–2025
Integrated model-based requirements, systems, and software engineering for an automotive supercomputing platform, including integration and validation on a shared test bench.

DiProLeA: Entwicklung eines durchgängig digitalen Produktentstehungsprozesses mit lernendem Assistenzsystem
BMBF · 2021–2024
Model-based development, semantic interoperability, and open system architectures for digital continuity across technical systems.

IRISS: Intuitive Roboterprogrammierung und Integration standardisierter Steuerungsschnittstellen
StMWi · 2021–2023
OPC UA-based integration of robot, tool, and sensor components, alongside hardware-independent software components and capability models.

Data Backbone: Erforschung eines Data Backbone Ansatzes für den Einsatz montagefähiger Robotiksysteme in cyberphysischen Systemen
StMWi · 2018–2020
Integrated digital engineering linking product, process, and resource models to automatically generated and monitored robot task sequences.

Selected Publications

Pan, Fengjunjie, Lin, Jianjie, & Rickert, Markus. (2025). Automatic Platform Configuration and Software Integration for Software-Defined Vehicles. IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering : Symposium Proceedings, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISSE65546.2025.11370099

Wen, Long, Zhang, Yu, Rickert, Markus, Lin, Jianjie, Pan, Fengjunjie, & Knoll, Alois. (2025). Cloud-Native Fog Robotics: Model-Based Deployment and Evaluation of Real-Time Applications. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 10(1), 398–405. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2024.3504243

Pan, Fengjunjie, Rickert, Markus, Betz, Tobias, Wen, Long, Lin, Jianjie, Petrovic, Nenad, Lienkamp, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2024). Toward Software-Defined Vehicles: From Model-Based Engineering to Virtualization-Based Deployment. IEEE Access, 12, 192127–192145. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3512002

Wen, Long, Rickert, Markus, Pan, Fengjunjie, Lin, Jianjie, Zhang, Yu, Betz, Tobias, & Knoll, Alois. (2024). Virtualization & Microservice Architecture for Software-Defined Vehicles: An Evaluation and Exploration (pp. 1–15). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2412.09995

Pan, Fengjunjie, Lin, Jianjie, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2023). Automated Design Space Exploration for Resource Allocation in Software-Defined Vehicles. 2023 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/IV55152.2023.10186605

Wen, Long, Rickert, Markus, Pan, Fengjunjie, Lin, Jianjie, & Knoll, Alois. (2023). Bare-Metal vs. Hypervisors and Containers: Performance Evaluation of Virtualization Technologies for Software-Defined Vehicles. 2023 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/IV55152.2023.10186789

Pan, Fengjunjie, Lin, Jianjie, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2022). Resource Allocation in Software-Defined Vehicles: ILP Model Formulation and Solver Evaluation. 2022 IEEE 25th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2577–2584. https://doi.org/10.1109/ITSC55140.2022.9922526

Profanter, Stefan, Perzylo, Alexander, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2021). A Generic Plug & Produce System Composed of Semantic OPC UA Skills. IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, 2, 128–141. https://doi.org/10.1109/OJIES.2021.3055461

Perzylo, Alexander, Kessler, Ingmar, Profanter, Stefan, & Rickert, Markus. (2020). Toward a Knowledge-Based Data Backbone for Seamless Digital Engineering in Smart Factories. 2020 25th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), 164–171. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETFA46521.2020.9211943

Perzylo, Alexander, Profanter, Stefan, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2019). OPC UA NodeSet Ontologies as a Pillar of Representing Semantic Digital Twins of Manufacturing Resources. 2019 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), 1085–1092. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETFA.2019.8868954

Profanter, Stefan, Breitkreuz, Ari, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2019). A Hardware-Agnostic OPC UA Skill Model for Robot Manipulators and Tools. 2019 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), 1061–1068. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETFA.2019.8869205

Profanter, Stefan, Tekat, Ayhun, Dorofeev, Kirill, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2019). OPC UA versus ROS, DDS, and MQTT: Performance Evaluation of Industry 4.0 Protocols. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), 955–962. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIT.2019.8755050

Rickert, Markus, & Gaschler, Andre. (2017). Robotics Library: an Object-Oriented Approach to Robot Applications. IROS Vancouver 2017: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada September 24-28, 2017: Conference Digest, 733–740. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2017.8202232

Perzylo, Alexander, Somani, Nikhil, Profanter, Stefan, Kessler, Ingmar, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2016). Intuitive Instruction of Industrial Robots: Semantic Process Descriptions for Small Lot Production. IROS 2016: 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems: October 9-14, 2016, Daejeon Convention Center, Daejeon, Korea, 2293–2300. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2016.7759358

Perzylo, Alexander, Somani, Nikhil, Rickert, Markus, & Knoll, Alois. (2015). An Ontology for CAD Data and Geometric Constraints as a Link Between Product Models and Semantic Robot Task Descriptions. 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 4197–4203. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2015.7353971

Wittmeier, Steffen, Jäntsch, Michael, Dalamagkidis, Konstantinos, Rickert, Markus, Marques, Hugo Gravato, & Knoll, Alois. (2011). CALIPER: A Universal Robot Simulation Framework for Tendon-Driven Robots. 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 1063–1068. https://doi.org/10.1109/iros.2011.6094455

Cheng, Chih-Hong, Rickert, Markus, Buckl, Christian, Lee, Edward A., & Knoll, Alois. (2009). Toward the Design of Robotic Software with Verifiable Safety. 2009 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC). 2009 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Seattle, WA, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/compsac.2009.89