Wolfram Burgard

Prof. Wolfram Burgard is a Professor for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and Founding Chair of the Engineering Department at the University of Technology Nuremberg. Previously, he was a professor of computer science at the University of Freiburg (1999–2021), where he established the renowned Autonomous Intelligent Systems research lab. His research focuses on probabilistic techniques for robot navigation, state estimation, and control, with notable contributions to SLAM, path-planning, and mobile robot applications such as museum tour-guides (Rhino/Minerva) and autonomous vehicles.

His research interests span artificial intelligence, mobile robotics, and autonomous systems. Key projects include deploying interactive museum robots, developing autonomous parking systems (2008), and the pedestrian-like Obelix robot (2012). He has authored over 350 papers, co-authored seminal books like Probabilistic Robotics, and holds the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2009) and ERC Advanced Grant (2010). He is an ECCAI and AAAI Fellow, and member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Burgard coordinated the BrainLinks-BrainTools Cluster of Excellence (2012–2019), funded by the German Research Foundation. His work emphasizes real-world applications, including industrial plant supervision and autonomous driving systems. His Erdős number is ≤4, and his publications are indexed on Google Scholar.