The topic is highly up-to-date. And KISD graduate Bartos Scharmach now received the reward for his efforts. Scharmach’s master thesis ”Building Confidence in Fully Autonomous Vehicles“ was in May 2019 ranked “First Place“ in the context of the Steinmüller-Engineering Incentive Award. On around 250 pages, Scharmach analyzes and compares in his written work current developments in the realm of automation and Artificial Intelligence amidst the transition period to fully autonomous working systems while also making philosophical issues and basic human demands the subject of discussion in his thesis.
The latter was written as a final paper in Scharmach’s master degree program of “Product Design and Process Development“ (campus Gummersbach) and was supervised at KISD by Prof. Hatto Grosse (Design for Manufacturing) and former KISD professor Andreas Muxel (Interaction/Interface Design, now Augsburg University of Applied Sciences). The Steinmüller-Engineering Prize with a total of three incentive awards is granted annually and wants to foster the work of graduates in master degree and PhD programs which succeed in analyzing and further developing innovative issues and approaches in culture, society, and technology. After graduating from KISD, Scharmach, not in the possession of a car, as he told the audience during the award ceremony in the city of Lindlar, now works as a designer for the car company “Audi“ in Ingolstadt.
In the past and during recent months, car accidents with fully autonomous vehicles for companies such as Tesla and Uber had been subject of debate fueling a general discussion on ethics, responsibility, Artificial Intelligence, man-machine interaction, and technology – making the content of Scharmach’s thesis an up-to-date topic.
For a text in German language, please visit the TH Köln webpage: bit.ly/2Mbh9Z8
Bartos Scharmach: “Building Confidence in Fully Autonomous Vehicles“, Master Thesis, supervised at KISD by: Prof. Hatto Grosse (Design for Manufacturing)
Photo: Steinmüller Engineering GmbH