Biography
Lars Kunze is Professor in Safety for Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of West England. Prior to this, he was a Departmental Lecturer in Robotics in the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI) and the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford (where he is now a visiting fellow), and a Stipendiary Lecturer in Computer Science at Keble College. He is a Programme Fellow of the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP) and a Co-Editor of the German Journal of Artificial Intelligence (KI Journal, Springer). At ORI, Lars leads the Cognitive Robotics Group (CRG).
Lars studied Cognitive Science (BSc, 2006) and Computer Science (MSc, 2008) at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and partly at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
He received his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 2014.
In May 2013, Lars was appointed as a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the School of Computer Science at Birmingham University.
In March 2017, he joined the Oxford Robotics Institute at Oxford University.
Research Interests
Lars' areas of expertise lie in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). His goal is to enable robots to understand their surroundings, to act autonomously, and to explain their own behaviour in meaningful human terms. To this end, his research concerns the design and development of fundamental AI techniques for autonomous robot systems. He focusses on the combination of knowledge representation, reasoning, machine learning, and robot perception; motivated by applications in complex, real-world environments.
Research Projects
- Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP), Sense-Assess-eXplain (SAX) Building trust in autonomous vehicles in challenging real-world driving scenarios. (https://ori.ox.ac.uk/projects/sense-assess-explain-sax/)
- EU H2020, Autonomous Decision Making in Very Long Traverses (ADE) Realising planetary rover systems with autonomous decision making capabilities in the context of opportunistic science missions. (https://www.h2020-ade.eu)
Research Group
Research Activity
- Programme Fellow of the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP)
- Editor of the German Journal of Artificial Intelligence (KI Journal, Springer)
DPhil Supervision Interests
I am looking for DPhil students to join the Cognitive Robotics Group (CRG) at the Oxford Robotics Institute. I am open to supervising DPhil students with an interest in perception, inference, learning, and interaction.
Recent Publications
On self-driving cars and its (broken?) promises. A case study analysis of the German Act on Autonomous Driving
Salvini P, Kunze L & Jirotka M (2024), Technology in Society, 102628
BibTeX
@article{onselfdrivingca-2024/6,
title={On self-driving cars and its (broken?) promises. A case study analysis of the German Act on Autonomous Driving},
author={Salvini P, Kunze L & Jirotka M},
journal={Technology in Society},
pages={102628},
year = "2024"
}
Aloft: Self-Adaptive Drone Controller Testbed
Imrie C, Howard R, Thuremella D, Proma NM, Pandey T et al. (2024), 70-76
BibTeX
@inproceedings{aloftselfadapti-2024/4,
title={Aloft: Self-Adaptive Drone Controller Testbed},
author={Imrie C, Howard R, Thuremella D, Proma NM, Pandey T et al.},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems},
pages={70-76},
year = "2024"
}
Physics-Based Causal Reasoning for Safe & Robust Next-Best Action Selection in Robot Manipulation Tasks
Cannizzaro R, Groom M, Routley J, Ness RO & Kunze L (2024)
BibTeX
@misc{physicsbasedcau-2024/3,
title={Physics-Based Causal Reasoning for Safe & Robust Next-Best Action
Selection in Robot Manipulation Tasks},
author={Cannizzaro R, Groom M, Routley J, Ness RO & Kunze L},
year = "2024"
}
OORD: The Oxford Offroad Radar Dataset
Gadd M, De Martini D, Bartlett O, Murcutt P, Towlson M et al. (2024)
BibTeX
@misc{oordtheoxfordof-2024/3,
title={OORD: The Oxford Offroad Radar Dataset},
author={Gadd M, De Martini D, Bartlett O, Murcutt P, Towlson M et al.},
year = "2024"
}
Semantic interpretation and validation of graph attention-based explanations for GNN models
Panagiotaki E, De Martini D & Kunze L (2024), 2023 21st International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 375-380
BibTeX
@inproceedings{semanticinterpr-2024/2,
title={Semantic interpretation and validation of graph attention-based explanations for GNN models},
author={Panagiotaki E, De Martini D & Kunze L},
booktitle={21st International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2023)},
pages={375-380},
year = "2024"
}
RAG-Driver: Generalisable Driving Explanations with Retrieval-Augmented In-Context Learning in Multi-Modal Large Language Model
Yuan J, Sun S, Omeiza D, Zhao B, Newman P et al. (2024)
BibTeX
@misc{ragdrivergenera-2024/2,
title={RAG-Driver: Generalisable Driving Explanations with Retrieval-Augmented In-Context Learning in Multi-Modal Large Language Model},
author={Yuan J, Sun S, Omeiza D, Zhao B, Newman P et al.},
year = "2024"
}
SEM-GAT: explainable semantic pose estimation using learned graph attention
Panagiotaki E, De Martini D, Pramatarov G, Gadd M & Kunze L (2024), 367-374
BibTeX
@inproceedings{semgatexplainab-2024/2,
title={SEM-GAT: explainable semantic pose estimation using learned graph attention},
author={Panagiotaki E, De Martini D, Pramatarov G, Gadd M & Kunze L},
booktitle={21st International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2023)},
pages={367-374},
year = "2024"
}
Variable autonomy through responsible robotics: design guidelines and research agenda
Reinmund T, Salvini P, Kunze L, Jirotka M & Winfield AFT (2024), ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 13(1), 1-36
BibTeX
@article{variableautonom-2024/1,
title={Variable autonomy through responsible robotics: design guidelines and research agenda},
author={Reinmund T, Salvini P, Kunze L, Jirotka M & Winfield AFT},
journal={ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction},
volume={13},
number={7},
pages={1-36},
publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},
year = "2024"
}
Human involvement in autonomous decision-making systems. Lessons learned from three case studies in aviation, social care and road vehicles
Salvini P, Reinmund T, Hardin B, Grieman K, Ten Holter CA et al. (2023), Frontiers in Political Science, 5
BibTeX
@article{humaninvolvemen-2023/12,
title={Human involvement in autonomous decision-making systems. Lessons learned from three case studies in aviation, social care and road vehicles},
author={Salvini P, Reinmund T, Hardin B, Grieman K, Ten Holter CA et al.},
journal={Frontiers in Political Science},
volume={5},
number={1238461},
publisher={Frontiers Media},
year = "2023"
}
CAR-DESPOT: causally-informed online POMDP planning for robots in confounded environments
Cannizzaro R & Kunze L (2023), 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018-2025
BibTeX
@inproceedings{cardespotcausal-2023/10,
title={CAR-DESPOT: causally-informed online POMDP planning for robots in confounded environments},
author={Cannizzaro R & Kunze L},
booktitle={2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023)},
pages={2018-2025},
year = "2023"
}
