EXC 2050:  Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI)

• Subject Area: Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
• Term: since 2019
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390696704

This proposal advocates establishing the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) to achieve significant breakthroughs for enhancing collaborations between humans and machines or, more generally, cyber-physical systems (CPS) in real, virtual, and remote environments.CeTI’s vision is to enable humans to interact with co-operating CPS over intelligent wide-area communication networks to promote equitable access to remote work and learning environments for people of different genders, ages, cultural backgrounds, or physical limitations. Thus, going far beyond the current state of the art, CeTI democratises the access to skills and expertise the same way as the current Internet has democratised the access to information.Capitalising on outstanding expertise within TUD and associated institutions in the fields of communication, robotics, electrical engineering, computer science, psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, the innovations of CeTI are reflected in its structural and research objectives. CeTI conducts multidisciplinary research to (i) advance the understanding of the complexities and dynamics of human goal-directed perceptions and actions from the psychological and medical perspectives, (ii) develop novel sensor and actuator technologies that augment the human mind and body, (iii) develop fast, bendable, adaptive, and reconfigurable electronics, (iv) create intelligent communication networks that connect humans and CPS by continuously adapting and learning to provide low latency, as well as high levels of resilience and security, (v) design new haptic coding schemes to cope with the deluge of information from massive numbers of body sensors, (vi) design online learning mechanisms as well as interface solutions for machines and humans to predict and augment each other’s actions, and (vii) to evaluate the above solutions as well as to engage the general public about the societal and ethical changes and new opportunities the new technologies will bring by means of use cases in medicine (context-aware robotic assistance systems in medical environments), industry (co-working industrial space), and the Internet of Skills (education and skill acquisition for the general public).CeTI creates an international, equal-opportunity research environment to train the next generation of outstanding researchers and foster their career development. Furthermore, CeTI aims to achieve socio-economic advancements by encouraging technology transfer to start-ups and existing companies.To meet these goals, CeTI builds on (a) excellent prior work in the fields of the Tactile Internet in support of telepresence and medical technology, as well as engineering and educational psychology, cognitive, computational, and lifespan developmental neurosciences, (b) excellent industry embedding, and (c) outstanding research infrastructures, including dedicated research buildings at TUD and associated institutions.

• DFG Programme: Clusters of Excellence (ExStra)
• Applicant Institution: Technische Universität Dresden
• Participating Institution: Fraunhofer-Institut für Organische Elektronik, Elektronenstrahl- und Plasmatechnik (FEP); Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) ; Institut für Robotik und Mechatronik; Technische Universität München; Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik; Lehrstuhl für Medientechnik
• Spokespersons: Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Hanns Paul Fitzek; Professorin Shu-Chen Li, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Thorsten Strufe
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ercan Altinsoy; Professor Dr. Uwe Aßmann; Professorin Dr. Christel Baier; Professor Dr.-Ing. Karlheinz Bock; Professor Dr.-Ing. Chokri Cherif; Professor Dr.-Ing. Raimund Dachselt; Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Ellinger; Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerhard P. Fettweis; Professor Dr. Christof Fetzer; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Diana Goehringer; Professor Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin; Professor Dr.-Ing. Eduard Axel Jorswieck; Professor Dr. Stefan Kiebel; Professor Dr. Hans-Gerd Maas; Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Mayr; Professorin Dr. Susanne Narciss; Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Ott; Professor Dr. Sebastian Pannasch; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Stefanie Speidel; Professor Dr.-Ing. Eckehard Steinbach; Uwe Vogel; Professor Dr. Jürgen Weitz