Mobile Robots #11 – Watch It Think, Watch It Move

Robots that see, think, and move — how hard can it be? 😄

This time, we’re getting hands-on with the real stuff: a live robot demo right in front of you, and a deep dive into one of robotics’ trickiest problems.

Two killer talks, and they fit together perfectly. Let’s go!

And an extra goodie: We’ll be hosted by the University of Applied Sciences OHM Nürnberg at their brand-new innovation center. That alone is worth a visit: https://www.th-nuernberg.de/en/research-innovation/research-institutes/research-building-aeg/the-building/

# What's on the menu?

🥗 Starter: pib roadmap 2026
Speaker: Dr. Jürgen Baier, pib.rocks

In this lightning talk, we’ll learn what’s planned for 2026 and beyond with the pib.rocks project - and there’s a lot of it! On the hardware side as always, but this year, the team is doubling down on intelligence and cognition. We already got a sneak peak and it’s something you should not miss - and as always, you’ll meet the team after the talk to learn more and find out how you can participate in the project.

1️⃣ From Simulation to Reality – RL Navigation That Actually Works
Speaker: Furkan Yöndem, TH Nuernberg
Topic: Training a robot in simulation and getting it to not fall apart in the real world.

Ah, the classic robotics heartbreak: your policy looks amazing in simulation, and then reality hits. This talk covers a research-project by the University of Applied Sciences that tackles this problem.
The idea: take raw camera input, convert it into clean segmentation maps, build a bird’s-eye-view (BEV) representation, and let an RL agent make steering and speed decisions from there. Training happens in massively parallel sim environments for speed and diversity.
Here’s what we’ll dig into:

• The full pipeline from camera to segmentation to BEV
• How vectorized sim environments enhance and training
• How they actually closed the sim-to-real gap
• Running it all on an NVIDIA Jetson or even a Raspberry Pi 5 - that means a lot of tech for us to dig into!

If you’ve ever wanted to see how you go from “works in simulation” to “works on a real robot” — don’t miss this one.

2️⃣ Live Demo of a Self-Built Robot – A Maker’s Look at Robotics
Speaker: Andreas Dohren, Robotics Enthusiast
Topic: Watching a self-built robot sense, decide, and act — live, step by step.

Forget slides. Forget theory. In this talk, we’ll dive into a fully self-built robot. You’ll watch it do its thing right in front of you - reacting to voice commands, moving through the room, pausing when nothing’s happening, and spotting objects and faces with its camera.
We’ll get into the technical details of how the robot is built - every behavior gets shown and explained as it happens, so you can really follow what’s going on under the hood. Whether you’re deep into robotics or just robot-curious — this is the kind of session that makes the tech click.
And yes, there’ll be plenty of time to ask questions and poke around!

⏱️ Agenda
🚨 Please note: We’ll sponsor drinks, but there won’t be any food this time. So make sure you’re well fed and won’t get hangry!
(Or just bring snacks for everyone 😁)

18:00 – Doors open & networking begins
18:30 – Welcome & intro
18:45 – Talk 1: Live Robot Demo
19:30 – Talk 2: Sim-to-Real RL Navigation Deep Dive
20:30 – Open networking, drinks, demos
21:30 – Event wrap-up