Institute for Regulation and Control Systems (IRS)

The Institute for Control Systems (IRS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has stood for excellence in research and academic teaching since its foundation in 1965. It is one of 16 institutes in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. Divided into three research groups, the IRS deals with the modelling, identification and control of complex dynamic systems. The Cooperative Systems group aims to create optimal cooperation between humans and machines by developing intelligent automation algorithms that combine the strengths of both partners. The main applications are in the field of advanced driver assistance systems, care robotics and extraterrestrial exploration. With innovative methods for controlling energy grids
and estimating the state of battery systems, the Alternative Energy Systems Group is making a contribution to the energy transition. The methods developed in the group of systems with guarantees systematically take into account uncertainties occurring in technical systems and thus form the basis for safe highly automated systems. The focus here is on trajectory planning and trajectory control of mobile robot platforms and all-wheel steered vehicles as an application context.

The teaching portfolio of the IRS is characterised by a mixture of theoretical basic courses and innovative laboratory practicals in order to enable direct application and reflection of theoretical methods in practice. Lectures on the optimisation of dynamic systems or on basic control methods of the frequency and time domain can be mentioned as examples of the first category. On the other hand, teams of students independently solve a challenging control engineering development task in the internships offered or build their own start-up based on novel product ideas with cooperating drones.

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Tracker has been designed for the requirements and workflow of Engineering users wanting to track the position and orientation of objects with as little effort and as low latency as possible. Perfect for many applications in robotics, UAV tracking, VR and human-machine interaction, Tracker lets you define what you want to track with a couple of mouse clicks – and then you can just leave in the background tracking. A simple SDK lets you connect the output data stream to your own software.

Student Innovation Lab

In the course «Student Innovation Lab», teams of students go through the entire process of a start-up, from brainstorming to implementing a prototype to pitching to potential investors. As a starting point for the innovative product ideas, three innovation labs are provided, which represent the technology building blocks for the students. A Vicon motion capture system is part of the Automation Innovation Lab managed by the IRS. Eight Vicon Vero cameras in conjunction with Vicon Tracker are used to track the specially developed quadrocopters. This enables precise determination of position and orientation information for flight control, which means that even highly dynamic manoeuvres can be flown. Depending on the application, other objects can also be tracked by using the Vicon system, for example to realise gripping applications or evasive manoeuvres for the quadrocopter platform.

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