Dr.-Ing. Clemens Schuwerk

Engineer & Roboticist

Location

Munich, DE

I’m Clemens Schuwerk, an engineer and expert in robotics. Grown up in southern Germany, I studied Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Edinburgh. Driven by my passion for game-changing technologies, I joined the Chair of Media Technology at TUM in 2011 to pursue my PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in the areas of robotics and haptic technologies. My dissertation was awarded „summa cum laude“ in 2016. After my PhD, I focused on transferring research results on robotic perception into business and worked as a project leader to spin off a robotics startup from the university. Together with my colleagues, I received the nationwide award „Digital Innovations“ in 2018. Today, my interests include smart robots, robotic perception and artificial intelligence. I have also been working as a freelancing web developer since 2009.

Robotics

Smart and autonomous service robots will change our daily lives by supporting us with the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs at work or at home. But to achieve autonomy, there are still many open challenges to solve, especially in the area of perception or grasping.

Artificial Intelligence

Recent advancements in Machine Learning and Deep Learning promote many novel applications such as autonomous cars or smart robots. From object detection to grasp planning - there are many exciting areas that evolve rapidly.

Haptics

The feedback we receive today while interacting with machines is primary audio-vision-based, whilst many studies have proven the importance of the sense of touch for various tasks. Extending human-machine-interaction with more than simple vibration feedback, thus, will open up many new applications in the near future!

Communication & Control

Remote controlled robots are a prime example for machines that benefit from the integration of haptic feedback. The required low-delay data exchange between the human operator and the remote robot, however, poses severe challenges on the underlying communication and control systems.

Virtual Reality

Head-mounted display allow us to immerse into virtual worlds, but today the immersion is mainly audio-visual. Novel haptic joysticks, algorithms and control strategies, however, enable us to also feel virtual environments, bringing the immersion to a new level.

Cloud & Web Technology

Web technology has recently evolved rapidly. Starting from simple HTML-based web pages, new JavaScript frameworks, modern responsive web design and powerful cloud infrastructure now support many novel applications and business models.

Client/Server-Based Shared Haptic Virtual Environments

Perceptual Data Reduction, Communication, and Delay Compensation

Shared Haptic Virtual Environments are often realized using a client/server architecture, which suffers from heavy communication load and reduced fidelity in the presence of communication delay. This thesis proposes human-centric data reduction schemes for the haptic interaction with remotely simulated objects. The system analyses reveal guidelines on the communication delay below which the effects of delay are not perceivable. If this delay is exceeded, the proposed algorithms compensate for its effects.

Available online: mediaTUM

2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

Research Article

N. Alt, C. Schuwerk, S. Lochbrunner, and G. Denninger

Simplifying the sensor system of smart robots

Impact, vol. 2018, no. 11, Dec. 2018, pp. 45-47.

Journal Publications

C. Schuwerk, X. Xu, and E. Steinbach

On the Transparency of Client/Server-based Haptic Interaction with Deformable Objects

IEEE Transactions on Haptics, vol. 10, no. 2, April 2017.

M. Strese, C. Schuwerk, A. Iepure, and E. Steinbach

Multimodal feature-based surface material classification

IEEE Transactions on Haptics, vol. 10, no. 2, April 2017.

PhD Thesis

C. Schuwerk

Client/Server-Based Shared Haptic Virtual Environments: Perceptual Data Reduction, Communication, and Delay Compensation

Published online. mediaTUM

Journal Publications

X. Xu, C. Schuwerk, B. Cizmeci, and E. Steinbach

Energy prediction for teleoperation systems that combine the time domain passivity approach with perceptual deadband-based haptic data reduction

IEEE Transactions on Haptics, vol. 9, no. 4, Oct. 2016.

X. Xu, B. Cizmeci, C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

Model-mediated teleoperation: Toward stable and transparent teleoperation systems

IEEE Access, vol. 4, Jan. 2016.

Conference Publications

C. Schuwerk, W. Freund, and E. Steinbach

Low-delay compression of polygon mesh deformation data for remote haptic interaction with simulated deformable objects

Proceedings of the IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), Philadelphia, USA, Apr. 2016.

Journal Publications

C. Schuwerk, X. Xu, R. Chaudhari, and E. Steinbach

Compensating the effect of communication delay in client-server-based shared haptic virtual environments

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, vol. 13, no. 1, Dec. 2015.

R. Chaudhari, C. Schuwerk, M. Danaei, and E. Steinbach

Perceptual and bitrate-scalable coding of haptic surface texture signals

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing (JSTSP), vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 462–473, Apr. 2015.

Conference Publications

C. Schuwerk, X. Xu, W. Freund, and E. Steinbach

Transparency analysis of client-server-based multi-rate haptic interaction with deformable objects

Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference 2015, Chicago, USA, Jun. 2015, pp. 506–511.

X. Xu, B. Cizmeci, C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

Haptic data reduction for time-delayed teleoperation using the time domain passivity approach

Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference, Chicago, USA, Jun. 2015, pp. 512–518.

X. Xu, C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

Passivity-based model update for model-mediated teleoperation

Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 6th IEEE International Workshop on Hot Topics in 3D - Hot3D, Turin, Italy, Jun. 2015, pp. 1–6.

M. Strese, C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

Surface classification using acceleration signals recorded during human freehand movement

Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference, Jun. 2015, pp. 214–219.

M. Strese, C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

On the retrieval of perceptually similar haptic surfaces

Proceedings of the International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), Costa Navarino, Greece, May 2015, pp. 1–6.

R. Chaudhari, Y. Yoo, C. Schuwerk, S. Choi, and E. Steinbach

Objective quality prediction for haptic texture signal compression

Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Brisbane, Australia, Apr. 2015, pp. 2224–2228.

Journal Publications

C. Schuwerk, G. Paggetti, R. Chaudhari, and E. Steinbach

Perception-based traffic control for shared haptic virtual environments

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, vol. 23, no. 3, Oct. 2014.

Conference Publications

C. Schuwerk, R. Chaudhari, and E. Steinbach

Delay compensation in shared haptic virtual environments

Proceedings of the IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), Houston, USA, Feb. 2014, pp. 371–377.

M. Strese, J.-Y. Lee, C. Schuwerk, Q. Han, H.-G. Kim, and E. Steinbach

A haptic texture database for tool-mediated texture recognition and classification

Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Haptic Audio-Visual Environments and Games (HAVE), Dallas, Texas, USA, Oct. 2014, pp. 118–123.

Conference Publications

C. Schuwerk, N. Chaudhari, and E. Steinbach

An area-of-interest based communication architecture for shared haptic virtual environments

Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Haptic Audio-Visual Environments and Games (HAVE), Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 2013, pp. 57–62.

C. Schuwerk, and E. Steinbach

Smooth object state updates in distributed haptic virtual environments

Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Haptic Audio-Visual Environments and Games (HAVE), Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 2013, pp. 51–56.

Conference Publications

C. Schuwerk, R. Chaudhari, and E. Steinbach

Perceptually robust traffic control in distributed haptic virtual environments

Proceedings of the Eurohaptics Conference, Tampere, Finland, Jun. 2012, pp. 469–480.

Conference Publications

R. Chaudhari, C. Schuwerk, V. Nitsch, E. Steinbach, and B. Färber

Opening the haptic loop: Network degradation limits for haptic task performance

Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Haptic Audio-Visual Environments and Games (HAVE), Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, Oct. 2011, pp. 56–61.

C. Spleiß, C. Schuwerk, V. Nitsch, E. Steinbach, and B. Färber

An Algorithm for Content Mobility in a Future Internet Architecture

IEEE ICC 2011 Workshop T1, Advances in Mobile Networking - Towards a Next Generation Mobile Core Network, Kyoto, Japan, 2011.

Founder-Award "Digital Innovation" 2018

We, the team behind "RoVi Robot Vision", were awarded with the main prize of the nationwide startup competition "Digital Innovations" for our innovative technology and business venture idea.
More info:

"Best Pitch Award" UnternehmerTUM Demo Day 2017

Rated by a jury of entrepreneurs, investors and startup coaches, my three minute long pitch was awarded as the best startup pitch at the "UnternehmerTUM Demo Day" event.

"People's Choice Award" Innovation Challenge 2015

Our "Remote Texture Renderer" Android App, which recognizes haptic texture using Machine Learning and synthetically displays them on a smartphone with a novel touchscreen, was awarded at the World Haptics Conference 2015.
More info: |

"Best Poster Award" Haptics Symposium 2014

My research paper „Delay Compensation in Shared Haptic Virtual Environments“ was awarded at the Haptics Symposium 2014, one of the biggest conferences about haptic technology.
More info:

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Webdesign

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Swimming

Travelling

Location

Munich, DE

Web

clemens.schuwerk.info

Email

clemens@schuwerk.info