Maren Bennewitz

Maren Bennewitz is a robotics professor at the University of Bonn whose research covers robot navigation, active perception, intelligent manipulation and personalized human-robot interaction. She coauthored a 2002 paper that learns human motion patterns from mobile robot sensor data to improve people following and obstacle avoidance. She earned a computer science diploma at Bonn in 1999 and a doctorate at Freiburg in 2004, then joined Bonn as Professor for Humanoid Robots in 2014 after research posts in Freiburg. She served as Bonn’s Vice Rector for Information Technology and Knowledge Transfer from 2015 to 2021, became Vice Rector for Digitalization and Information Management in May 2021, and leads the Humanoid Robots Lab. In 2026, she gave an ICRA keynote on active perception, moderated a panel on robotics and AI at the German Robotics Conference, and led AgriLoop, a project on natural-language interaction between greenhouse robots and agricultural experts.

Now at: University of Bonn
Born: 1973
Works: 256
Citations: 8,906
h-index: 37
Badges: Boomerang

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1999–2004

Bonn studies, Freiburg doctorate

She earns a computer science diploma at the University of Bonn in 1999 and a doctorate at the University of Freiburg in 2004. Her dissertation, Mobile Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments, is supervised by Wolfram Burgard.
2002

Learning human motion patterns

In 2002, she coauthors “Learning Motion Patterns of Persons for Mobile Service Robots” with Wolfram Burgard and Sebastian Thrun. The method learns typical human trajectories from mobile robot sensor data to improve people following and obstacle avoidance.
2004–2014

From Freiburg to Bonn

She works as a research assistant before serving as a postdoctoral researcher at Freiburg’s Institute of Computer Science from 2004 to 2008 and a junior professor for humanoid robots there from 2008 to 2014. In 2014, she joins Bonn’s Institute of Computer Science as Professor for Humanoid Robots.
2015–2021

Vice Rector for IT

In 2015, she becomes the University of Bonn’s Vice Rector for Information Technology and Knowledge Transfer; she holds the role through 2021.
March 2026

A robotics and AI panel

At the German Robotics Conference in March 2026, she moderates a panel on integrating robotics and AI.
June 2026

Active perception at ICRA

On June 3, 2026, she gives an ICRA keynote titled “Advancing Service Robots Through Active Perception: Mapping and Object Search Under Occlusion.”
August 2026

AgriLoop greenhouse robots

In August 2026, she leads AgriLoop, a project developing a human-in-the-loop system that combines language models, vision-language models, vision-language-action models, embedded robotics and 3D plant perception to help agricultural experts guide greenhouse robots with natural language.
Since May 2021

Vice Rector and lab leader

She becomes the University of Bonn’s Vice Rector for Digitalization and Information Management in May 2021. She leads the Humanoid Robots Lab and works on robot navigation, active perception, intelligent manipulation and personalized human-robot interaction.

Career

Since 2014University of BonnProfessor for Humanoid Robots, Vice Rector for Information Technology and Knowledge Transfer
2023–2026Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft