Graduate School

The Graduate School of the "Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics - CoR-Lab" has been established at Bielefeld University, Germany, as a research centre for intelligent systems and human-machine interaction. The CoR-Lab forms a strategic partnership between Bielefeld University and the Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH, Germany. It will pursue fundamental research in the field of cognitive robots and intelligent systems, where the Honda humanoid robot ASIMO is made available as an advanced technological platform.

The CoR-Lab addresses challenging scientific questions: What are the basic mechanisms of cognition and learning? How can we endow robots with social competence, to make them acceptable as assistants to humans? How can machines communicate smoothly and on semantic levels with humans? Understanding and modeling these principles is a challenge going beyond engineering and computer science. Substantial progress requires the cross-disciplinary integration of experience in engineering and computer science, brain science, and cognitive sciences, including the humanities and social sciences.

Within the CoR-Lab, the Graduate School (CoR-GS) forms a department focusing on the promotion of PhD students and Postdocs. Research activities will be structured around the areas interaction-based representation, resource-bounded adaptation, and skill webs covering key abilities that have to be understood and mastered in order to advance cognitive interaction in technical systems.