PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hartmut Surmann

Hartmut Surmann is a German roboticist and professor of autonomous systems at the Westfälische Hochschule in Gelsenkirchen, where he leads the robotics lab and applies neural networks to rescue drones. He earned a doctorate at the University of Dortmund in 1995 on the automatic design of fuzzy systems with genetic algorithms and neural networks. At GMD and Fraunhofer in Sankt Augustin, he built mobile robots such as Kurt3D, which took second place in the RoboCup Rescue league in 2004, and coauthored a laser scan matching method for outdoor 6D SLAM in 2005. Robots from his EU projects were deployed after earthquakes in Mirandola in 2012 and Amatrice in 2016, and from 2018 he helped build the German Rescue Robotics Center, flying drone reconnaissance over flooded Erftstadt in 2021. His recent papers use neural networks to spot humans, cars and fire in drone images, to build 3D scenes with neural radiance fields, and to steer micro-drones that lose their communication link.

Timeline

  1. 1984–1996

    A fuzzy systems doctorate at Dortmund

    Born in Dülmen in 1963, he studies computer science at the University of Dortmund from 1984 to 1989 and writes a diploma thesis on the hardware fault tolerance of associative memories based on neural networks. From 1990 to 1994, he works at Karl Goser's chair for electronic components in electrical engineering and earns a doctorate in 1995 on the automatic design of fuzzy systems with genetic algorithms and neural networks. The thesis wins the doctoral award of the German AI institutes in 1996.

  2. 1994–2001

    Mobile robots at GMD

    In 1994, he moves to GMD, the German National Research Center for Information Technology in Sankt Augustin, as a postdoc and starts building autonomous mobile robots such as MORIA. In March 1995, MORIA wins the FUZZ-IEEE/IFES'95 robot intelligence award. As a senior researcher from 1997, he develops the robots Marvin, Odysseus and Thor.

  3. 2001–2006

    Kurt3D and 6D SLAM

    He becomes a senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems in April 2001, working on robot control architectures and a 3D laser range finder for mobile robots. His robot Kurt3D takes second place in the RoboCup Rescue real robot league in Lisbon in July 2004, and his paper on mapping rescue environments with Kurt3D wins the SSRR 2005 best paper award. With Andreas Nüchter, Kai Lingemann and Joachim Hertzberg, he coauthors a laser scan matching method for outdoor 6D SLAM at KI 2005, the German Conference on AI.

  4. 2006–2009

    Professor at Gelsenkirchen

    In July 2006, he becomes a senior researcher in robotics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems, where he works on 3D mapping and 6D SLAM until June 2018. He leads the international rescue robotics team after the collapse of Cologne's historical city archive in March 2009. In September 2009, he becomes professor of autonomous systems in the computer science department of the Westfälische Hochschule in Gelsenkirchen, taking charge of a newly created teaching and research area.

  5. 2010–2018

    Robots in Italian earthquake zones

    From 2010 to 2014, he works with international partners in an EU-funded project on autonomous ground and aerial robots, which are deployed after the 2012 earthquake in Mirandola in northern Italy. He then joins the EU project TRADR from 2014 to 2018, and in 2016 he flies drones inside two churches after the earthquake in Amatrice.

  6. 2018–2022

    The German Rescue Robotics Center

    He is a founding and board member of the German Rescue Robotics Center (DRZ) and helps build it from 2018; from November 2019, he also works on AI-Arena, a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in which small robots and drones learn logistics tasks with artificial intelligence. In July 2021, he and master's student Dominik Slomma fly drone reconnaissance over flooded Erftstadt for a DRZ task force led by the Dortmund fire department. In 2022, he is first author of a report on three DRZ task force missions in which ground and aerial robots explore destroyed buildings.

  7. 2023

    Neural networks for rescue drones

    In 2023, he and his coauthors train neural networks to detect cars, humans and fire in drone images from vegetation fires, using a dataset labeled with help from pretrained networks. They also pair drones smaller than 30 cm carrying 360-degree cameras with neural radiance fields to build 3D representations of disaster scenes, presented at SSRR 2023 in Fukushima.

  8. As of October 2026

    Head of the Gelsenkirchen robotics lab

    He is a professor in the computer science and communication department of the Westfälische Hochschule, where he leads the robotics lab and holds a membership in the DRZ. In 2026, he and Niklas Voigt present a 360-degree vision dataset and convolutional neural networks that steer micro-drones toward open space when their communication link fails, accepted at the IEEE/ASME AIM 2026 conference in Genoa.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Surmann: Curriculum vitae hartmut-surmann.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Hartmut Surmann – Wikipedia de.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Hartmut Surmann - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Heuristic-Based Laser Scan Matching for Outdoor 6D SLAM robotik.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Roboter lernen, selbstständig und im Team zu arbeiten: Westfälische Hochschule w-hs.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Civil Protection: Valuable help from above interschutz.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. [2212.09354] Lessons from Robot-Assisted Disaster Response Deployments by the German Rescue Robotics Center Task Force arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. [2310.05512] UAVs and Neural Networks for search and rescue missions arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. [2401.06143] Redefining Recon: Bridging Gaps with UAVs, 360 degree Cameras, and Neural Radiance Fields arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  10. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dipl. Inform. Hartmut Surmann: Westfälische Hochschule w-hs.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  11. [2608.19866] A 360-Degree Vision Dataset for Learning Yaw Control on GPS-Denied Micro-UAVs in Disaster-Response-Relevant Environments arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.