Areas of Work
01 | Projects
URWalkingCampus navigation and room search at the University of Regensburg and the OTH Regensburg |
02 | Research Interests
Natural Language Processing
Our main research interest lies in the interference between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural language - viewed from the perspective of automated language understanding: Reconstructing the meaning of utterances automatically requires well suited means for formally representing syntactic and semantic information entailed in these utterances. The precise meaning of an utterance in context can only be determined effectively if information about the context can be incorporated in this inference process. As a consequence, natural language understanding requires also the context to be represented formally. The challenge of this area of research obviously is to develop methods to apply knowledge about the discourse context and the activity context in which utterances are made for inferring the meaning of an utterance in this context and conclude the changes of the context resulting from the utterance.
Another aspect of this issue is the context-aware processing of speech recognizer output. Here, the challenge lies in applying pragmatic knowledge for the evaluation and disambiguation of hypotheses generated by a speech recognizer.
For devising solutions to the issues addressed above, we cover several interconnected areas of research:
- Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural language
- Theory of discourse
- Models of discourse representation
- Parsing
- Formal languages and formal logics
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Probabilistic models of natural language
Multimodal User Interfaces
NLU is of interest in our research group as a modality for users to interact with intelligent information systems. Such systems require intelligent interfaces as users and systems interact and exchange information about cooperative problem solving tasks. Intelligent interfaces have to support this highly complex multimodal discourse. To develop innovative solutions in this area, we work on
- models of cooperation
- symbolic and probabilistic planning
- modellng for actions
- task analysis
- problem solving
User Models and User Preferences
When users and information systems cooperate, systems have to react appropriately on user preferences. Understanding the preferences helps understanding the user's behavior, recognizing his current and future activities, and predicting what users could do next. In several use cases, we develop user models for activities and preferences and tackle the areas of
- User modeling
- User preferences
- Recommender systems
Interactive Assistance Systems
In several research projects, we apply our concepts in order to implement and evaluate intelligent assistance and information systems. They are capable to interact in different modalities with their users and solve problems cooperatively. Currently, the focus lies on:
- Pedestrian navigation systems (indoor and outdoor)
- Route planning for routes with multiple means of transport
- Route planning in indoor environments
- Localization in indoor environments
- User adaptive and context aware browsers (e.g. tourist guides on smartphones)
- Personalized information systems for prevention of diseases
03 | Teaching
Action Strategies of Intelligent Virtual Agents
Summer 2017
Advanced Methods of IR
Summer 2012
Advanced Seminar Information Science
Summer 2012 | Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Winter 2014/15 | Summer 2015 | Winter 2015/16 | Summer 2016 | Winter 2016/17 | Summer 2017 | Winter 2017/18 | Summer 2018 | Winter 2018/19 | Summer 2019 | Winter 2019/20 | Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Agent Stories - Lecture Series
Summer 2012
AI for Computer Games
Summer 2017
AI for Serious Games
Winter 2017/18
Algorithms for Human-Machine Interaction
Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2015 | Winter 2016/17 | Winter 2017/18 | Winter 2018/19 | Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2022/23 | Winter 2023/24
Automatic Understanding of Spoken Language (with tutorial)
Winter 2011/12
Case Studies
Summer 2019 | Summer 2020
Control of Autonomous, Interactive Robots
Winter 2012/13
Corpus Linguistics (Lecture/Seminar)
Summer 2012
Doctoral Seminar
Winter 2020/21
Foundations and Application of Machine Learning Methods
Summer 2018 | Summer 2019 | Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Foundations of Computational Intelligence
Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Heaven - where is the information? User and situation adaptive information systems
Winter 2012/13
Human Activity Recognition
Summer 2012
Human-Machine Interaction Research Seminar: Current Trends in Speech Recognition
Winter 2011/12
Information Systems (with tutorial)
Summer 2014 | Summer 2015 | Summer 2016 | Summer 2017 | Summer 2018 | Summer 2019
The Intelligent Browser
Summer 2013
Interaction with Virtual Agents
Summer 2018
Interactive Navigation with Landmarks
Summer 2012
Knowledge Representation and Processing in Practice
Winter 2016/17
Lecture Series: Digital Society
Winter 2014/15
Lecture Series: ChatGPT & Co.
Summer 2023
Mathematical Foundations: Knowledge Representation and Processing (with Tutorial)
Winter 2011/12 | Summer 2012 | Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Winter 2015/16 | Winter 2016/17 | Winter 2017/18 | Winter 2018/19
Participating in Research Work
Winter 2021/22
Persuasion with Linguistic Methods
Summer 2016
Processing of Spoken Language
Summer 2016
Problem-oriented Programming Languages
Winter 2018/19
Representation and Processing of Secure and Uncertain Knowledge
Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2022/23 | Winter 2023/24
Scene affordance and focus of attention - How do people perceive spatial environments?
Summer 2024
Tutorial to Computational Intelligence
Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Tutorial to Introduction to Information Linguistics I
Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2023/24
Tutorial to Information Linguistics II: Language- and Text Technology
Summer 2020
Tutorial to Machine Learning Methods for DH
Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Tutorial to Representation and Processing of Secure and Uncertain Knowledge
Winter 2021/22
UR Walking
Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Summer 2015
Voice Recognition
Winter 2015/16
CV
Bernd Ludwig studied Computer Science at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1992-1997. His 2004 phd thesis focused on plan-based dialoge management for natural language processing applications and was supervised by Prof. Heinrich Niemann and Prof. Günther Görz, respectively. Bernd finished his habilitation at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2010 (title of thesis: Plan-based HCI in multimodal recommender systems ("Planbasierte Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion in multimodalen Assistenzsystemen").
1997-2004 Bernd was a post-doctoral researcher at the knowledge processing group of the Bavarian Research Center for Knowledge-Based Systems in Erlangen. He became an assistant professor at the Chair of Artificial Intelligence (Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg) in 2004. In 2010, Bernd was appointed BIT guest professor und postdoc researcher at the Free University of Bozen and the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science der Universitá degli Studi di Trento. After his return in November 2010, he was an associate professor (Privatdozent) until March 2011. Bernd was appointed as professor of Computational Linguistics at the Chair of Information Science at University of Regensburg in August 2011.
His research focuses on the dependcies of Communicative Action in Human Computer Interaction as well as its implementation using efficient algorithms. Furthermore, he is interested in the use of mobile devices as an aid to solve complex tasks using recommender systems. Research projects (ROSE; VAMOS; NADINE) currently lead by Bernd Ludwig strongly reflect this interest.
He is co-editor of the German journal Künstliche Intelligenz and is an appointed reviewer at and organizer of several international conferences.
Publications
Sci. Activities
PC member
- AIA 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 (Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications)
- CaRR (Context-awareness in Retrieval and Recommendation) 2011
- ENTER 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
- euroHCIR 2012 (2nd European Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval)
- Interact 2013
- ICAART 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
- ISI 2021
- IWCS 2011 (9th International Conference on Computational Semantics)
- Log-IC 2011 (Second International Workshop on Logic-Based Interpretation of Context: Modeling and Applications)
- MobileHCI 2013
- RecSys 2014, 2015, 2021
- S4F2012 (Searching For Fun Workshop in conjunction with ECIR 2012), 2014
- UMMS3 (User Modelling for Motivational Systems 3)
- IIiX 2014
- ECIR 2015
Reviews for Journals
- UMUAI (User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction)
- BNSC (Journal on BioNanoScience)
- BISE
- German Journal of Artificial Intelligence
-
TiiS (ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems)
(Co-)Chair of Workshops or Conferences
- CAIA 2010, 2011 (Workshop on Context Aware Intelligent Assistance in conjunction with KI 2010, 2011)
- CHIIR 2022 (General Co-Chair ACM Conference on Human Interaction and Information Retrieval)
- COSIT 2019 (General Co-Chair 14th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory)
- HealthRecSys 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 (Workshop on Health Recommender Systems)
- IIiX2014 (Information Interaction in Context symposium)
- Lifestyle 2012 (Workshop on Recommender Technologies for Lifestyle Change in conjunction with RecSys 2012)
PhD Student (Co-)Supervisions
- Dr. Karema Al Subari
- Prof. Dr. Christina Bauer
- Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. rer. nat. Theresa Götz
- Dr. Manuel Ullmann
- Dr. Jürgen Schedlbauer
- Dr. Robert Jackermeier
- Stefan Kerscher (ongoing)
- Sebastian Steindl (ongoing)
Grants
2022 | Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik (Journal of Medical Physics) Author Award 2022 for the best paper in the preceding yearTheresa I. Götz, Elmar W. Lang, Christian Schmidkonz, Torsten Kuwert, Bernd Ludwig for the paper "Dose Voxel Kernel Prediction With Neural Networks for Radiation Dose Estimation" |
2018 - 2021 | BMBF Research Grant for OPTAPEB |
2018 | AMiner Most Influential Scholar Award |
2016 | 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Mul- timedia Nomination for Best Paper Award |
2010 | KI 2010: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 33rd Annual Ger- man Conference on AI Nomination for Best Paper Award |
1997 | SEW-EURODRIVE-Stiftung Study Award for Diploma Thesis „Partial Logics for Seman- |