Whether voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, smart home systems, intelligent energy grids or autonomous vehicles: digitalisation is increasingly merging the physical and virtual worlds in everyday life. People and machines are working together more and more intensively and machines are increasingly taking on tasks that were previously carried out by people. Scientists at the University of Oldenburg are working with partner institutions in numerous projects to investigate the technical and social challenges posed by these so-called "human-cyber-physical systems" (HCPS) and how they can be designed responsibly. In order to bundle activities and create synergies, the university has established the interdisciplinary research centre "Human-Cyber-Physical Systems: Safety, Acceptance, Social and Cultural Embeddedness" (FZ HCPS for short). Professors and junior researchers from all six Schools are involved in the centre.
The central research topic of the interdisciplinary teams of scientists is the interaction between humans and machines at all levels. At the individual level, the focus is on the question of how technical systems can best support individual people. On the one hand, the systems must be able to recognise the current capabilities of the user in order to provide them with the best possible support. On the other hand, technical systems should convey complex information adapted to the situation in such a way that people can make the best possible decisions based on this information - for example in medical diagnostics or in intelligent energy networks.
At the cooperative level, scientists are investigating how groups of people can work together optimally with groups of technical systems - for example in traffic flow optimisation, safe environmental detection and lane planning for autonomous vehicles and ships, or safe and efficient cooperation between teams of emergency services, doctors and medical technology systems in the event of accidents and disaster scenarios. The scientists are also focussing on the social level: What ethical, moral and legal principles must autonomous technical systems act according to? What types of decisions can they take and which must be reserved for humans? The aim is to find ways to improve acceptance and trust in autonomously acting cyber-physical systems and to develop rules for their admission.
Thematically, the research centre is divided into four main areas: Fundamentals, Health, Industry and School and Society. For their work, the scientists have access to a research infrastructure that is unique in Germany: In five real-world laboratories - so-called Living Labs - they can test their developments in the fields of road and shipping traffic, smart energy, smart health and smart city in simulations and real environments. In addition to research, the centre's tasks also include promoting young talent and training subjects and managers. With this in mind, it supports the Schools in developing courses and degree programmes in the field of HCPS. In addition, doctoral programmes, graduate colleges and various further education formats are to be created.
In addition to the University of Oldenburg, the Jade University of Applied Sciences, the OFFIS computer science institute, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT are also involved in the research centre. Computing Science Professor Dr Werner Damm was elected Director, with Psychologist Professor Dr Christoph Herrmann (both from the University of Oldenburg) as Deputy Director.
