Günter Hommel is a computer scientist and robotics researcher. He taught at the Technische Universität München and later at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin), where he led the Real-Time Systems and Robotics group. His research included real-time systems, programming languages, stochastic Petri nets, robot kinematics, medical robotics and autonomous aerial systems.
Education and academic career
Hommel received a Diplom-Ingenieur degree in electrical engineering from TU Berlin in 1970 and later completed a doctorate in computer science there. Before moving to Karlsruhe in 1978, he worked in TU Berlin's electrical-engineering and computer-science departments. At the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe, he worked on software technology for real-time systems.
From 1980, Hommel headed a software-engineering research group at the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) in Bonn. He became a professor at the Technische Universität München in 1982. Two years later he returned to TU Berlin, where he became professor at the Institute of Computer Engineering and led the Real-Time Systems and Robotics group.
In 2002, Hommel received an honorary doctorate from the Moscow State Academy of Instrument Engineering and Computer Science. He has served several times as deputy chairman and chairman of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at TU Berlin.
Hommel was spokesman of the DFG Research Training Group Communication-Based Systems. The group was funded by the DFG from 1991 to 2000. Hommel edited the 1995 book Quality of Communication-Based Systems, which included research from the group.
He later served as spokesman of the DFG Research Training Group GRK 621, Stochastic Modelling and Quantitative Evaluation of Large Engineering Systems.
Hommel was chairman of the supervisory board of the Berlin software company Novedia AG for several years. Hommel was appointed Advisory Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In 2005, he became the first director of a joint research institute established in Shanghai by TU Berlin and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to study information and communication technology.
Hommel retired from TU Berlin on 30 September 2006. From 2012 to 2014, he taught robotics at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul and took part in establishing a robotics laboratory there.
Research
Programming languages and real-time systems
Hommel's early research included ELAN, a programming language developed for computer-science education. He later co-authored Methodisches Programmieren: Entwicklung von Algorithmen durch schrittweise Verfeinerung, which included a description of ELAN.
At Karlsruhe, Hommel worked on software technology for the Process Control with Data Processing Systems (PDV) programme. In a retrospective published by Springer in 2022, he described leading VDI/VDE-GMR working group 4.2.1 on PEARL, contributing to the formal description of Full PEARL, and chairing the group until work on the Multi-computer PEARL description was completed in 1985. PEARL was standardized in stages: Basic PEARL as a pre-standard (DIN 66253-1, 1981), Full PEARL (DIN 66253-2, 1982), and PEARL for distributed systems, or Mehrrechner-PEARL (DIN 66253-3, 1989).
Hommel also led a group on the systematic development of PDV systems that was part of GI and VDI/VDE-GMR. Fachgruppe 4.4.1 organized the 1983 Conference on Requirements Engineering, and Hommel chaired the program committee. The proceedings were edited by Hommel and D. Krönig.
His publications on distributed and fault-tolerant real-time programming included "Language Constructs for Distributed Programs" in the Springer volume Distributed Systems: Methods and Tools for Specification and "A Distributed, Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Language" in Real Time Computing. At TU Berlin, Hommel worked on GranAda, an extension of the Ada programming language built for distributed, fault-tolerant real-time systems. The research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
With Ralf Guido Herrtwich, Hommel wrote the Springer textbook Kooperation und Konkurrenz: Nebenläufige, verteilte und echtzeitabhängige Programmsysteme, on concurrent, distributed and real-time programming.
Modelling and performance evaluation
In 1995, Reinhard German, Christian Kelling, Armin Zimmermann and Hommel published a paper on TimeNET, a software package for modelling and evaluating stochastic Petri nets with non-exponentially distributed firing times.
From 1994 to 1999, Hommel led POPP, a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under its programme on production modelling. His work with Armin Zimmermann used coloured Petri nets to model manufacturing systems and evaluate their performance and dependability.
Hommel's subproject in the DFG's KONDISK programme received funding from 1997 to 2003. It aimed to extend TimeNET to model systems with both discrete and continuous behaviour using fluid stochastic Petri nets. With Katinka Wolter and Andrea Zisowsky, he published a 2002 study using these models to evaluate the performance and availability of a hybrid reactor system.
In 1996, Kelling and Hommel published a paper on rare-event simulation for stochastic Petri nets. It described the use of the RESTART method in a Petri net simulation environment.
A 2006 paper by Armin Zimmermann, Michael Knoke and Hommel described event ordering for Time-Warp simulation of stochastic discrete-event systems.
From 2003 to 2006, Hommel worked on a subproject in the DFG Priority Programme SPP 1148 on reconfigurable computing systems. The project examined transient performance and the development of dynamically reconfigurable multiprocessor and multi-FPGA systems.
Robotics
Robot kinematics and real-time planning
Hommel's robotics work included symbolic methods for robot kinematics. TU Berlin's research pages list ROCKY-X and AM² as expert systems for finding symbolic solutions to systems of kinematic equations. Hommel, Jorge Angeles and Peter Kovács edited the 1993 volume Computational Kinematics, and Kovács and Hommel contributed a chapter on tangent-half-angle substitution in kinematic equations.
Hommel and Jürgen Dorn published work on knowledge-based real-time planning.
Robot hand, sensor glove and medical robotics
As part of an anthropomorphic robot hand project, researchers in Hommel's group developed the TUB SensorGlove. Prototypes of the glove, designed to capture human grasping patterns and gestures, were shown at the Hannover industrial fair in 1993 and at CeBIT in 1995. Frank G. Hofmann and Hommel later published work on analysing and recognizing human gestural motions with acceleration sensors.
In 1998, Hommel co-authored a paper describing a surgical robot system for maxillofacial surgery. Andreas Hein, Tim C. Lueth and Hommel later published a 1999 IROS paper on contact detection in interactive surgical robotics systems.
Andreas Wege and Hommel presented a hand exoskeleton for rehabilitation of hand injuries at IROS 2005. With Christian Fleischer, Hommel developed a powered knee-support exoskeleton in which electromyographic signals were used to estimate the user's intended movement; the work appeared in IEEE Transactions on Robotics in 2008.
Autonomous aerial systems
In 1994, Hommel co-authored a paper on TUBROB, an autonomous flying robot. In 1995, TUBROB took part in Mission 1 of the International Aerial Robotics Competition, where the TU Berlin team finished second. MARVIN (Multi-purpose Aerial Robot Vehicle with Intelligent Navigation) was an autonomous model helicopter developed at TU Berlin. In 2000, it placed first at the International Aerial Robotics Competition's Millennial Event in Richland, Washington, after autonomously searching a simulated hazardous environment.
In 2005, Hommel co-authored an IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine article on the EU-funded COMETS project. The project developed coordination and perception methods for heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicles, including systems for forest-fire monitoring.
TU Berlin later took part in the EU-funded AWARE project, which ran from 2006 to 2009. It studied cooperation between autonomous aerial vehicles and wireless sensor-actuator networks, including load transport with multiple UAVs.
A 2010 paper by Markus Bernard, Konstantin Kondak and Hommel described modelling, control and flight experiments with suspended loads, including an experiment with three coupled helicopters in 2007.
Cooperation with Shanghai Jiao Tong University
The workshop series between TU Berlin and Shanghai Jiao Tong University began in 1990 with an international workshop on artificial intelligence.
Hommel and Sheng Huanye also edited proceedings from several workshops involving researchers from the two universities.
Selected books and edited volumes
Hommel, Günter; Jähnichen, Stefan; Koster, Cornelis H. A. (1983). Methodisches Programmieren: Entwicklung von Algorithmen durch schrittweise Verfeinerung. De Gruyter. . Hommel, G.; Krönig, D., eds. (1983). Requirements Engineering: Arbeitstagung der GI, Friedrichshafen, 12–14 Oktober 1983. Springer. . Herrtwich, Ralf Guido; Hommel, Günter (1989). Kooperation und Konkurrenz: Nebenläufige, verteilte und echtzeitabhängige Programmsysteme. Springer. . Angeles, Jorge; Hommel, Günter; Kovács, Peter, eds. (1993). Computational Kinematics. Springer. . Hommel, Günter, ed. (1995). Quality of Communication-Based Systems. Springer. . Hommel, Günter, ed. (2000). Communication-Based Systems. Kluwer Academic Publishers. . Hommel, Günter; Sheng, Huanye, eds. (2002). The Internet Challenge: Technology and Applications. Kluwer Academic Publishers. . Hommel, Günter; Sheng, Huanye, eds. (2006). Human Interaction with Machines. Springer. . Hommel, Günter; Sheng, Huanye, eds. (2006). Embedded Systems—Modeling, Technology, and Applications. Springer. .
References
External links
Günter Hommel at Technische Universität Berlin Günter Hommel at the German Research Foundation's GEPRIS database Günter Hommel at DBLP