I am a Senior Researcher at the DFKI Language Technology Lab. Since 2004 I have been leading several projects in the area of Human-Robot Interaction. My research focuses on developing "talking robots". What makes them understand spoken dialogue? How can they relate what is being talked about, to the world they live in?

Since early 2010 I lead a new EU-funded international project on human-robot interaction in urban search and rescue [ NIFTi: http://www.nifti.eu ], taking talking robots out of the lab and into disaster (or disastrous?) areas ...