DFKI Robotics Innovation Center
Bremen robotics department of DFKI with a 3.4-million-litre saltwater test basin; builds research AUVs including Cuttlefish, DeepLeng and FlatFish.
The Robotics Innovation Center (RIC) is the Bremen robotics research department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH, DFKI), a non-profit research company registered in Kaiserslautern under HRB 2313. The RIC started in 2006 as a DFKI laboratory and became DFKI's third full site in 2009. It has about 140 employees and around 60 student assistants. Its head, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Frank Kirchner, also leads the Robotics Research Group at the University of Bremen. The RIC's application areas are space robotics, underwater robotics, electric mobility, logistics and production, search and rescue and security, and assistance and rehabilitation systems. Its research teams include Mechanics & Control, Interaction & Learning, Maritime, Space, Terrestrial and Intelligent HealthCare Systems.
The Maritime Robotics team, led by Dr.-Ing. Leif Christensen with Dr.-Ing. Bilal Wehbe as deputy, develops autonomous systems that work under water and in the air, with a focus on machine learning and navigation. It targets offshore oil and gas, offshore wind, aquaculture, marine science, surveying, contaminated sites and environmental monitoring. The team regularly runs trials in the Atlantic and in the North and Baltic Seas.
Testing is centred on the 1,300 m2 Maritime Exploration Hall at Robert-Hooke-Strasse 1. Its main basin measures 23 x 19 x 8 m and holds 3.4 million litres of salt water. It is served by cranes rated at 12.5 t and 250 kg and by a 12-camera Qualisys underwater motion-capture system accurate to about 4 mm. The hall also has a 40 m3 glass tank, a 20 m3 black tank that can be shielded from outside light, a 600 bar pressure chamber that simulates a depth of 6,000 m, and a virtual reality lab. The State of Bremen invested EUR 3.1 million of EFRE (European Regional Development Fund) money in the building, and DFKI co-financed a further EUR 4 million.
The RIC has built a series of research vehicles. AUV Cuttlefish is a 1,200 kg dual-arm intervention AUV. It has eight 500 N ring thrusters, a 4-DOF docking arm, a 6-DOF working arm with a 7 kg payload, a fibre-optic IMU, a DVL and USBL. It is used in the CleanSeas project (2023-2027) on robotic handling of dumped munitions. DeepLeng is a 3 m, 130 kg exploration AUV rated to 2,000 m. It carries an R2Sonic 2020 multibeam echosounder and stereo cameras and runs for about 10 hours. It is used in projects including TRIPLE-nanoAUV on exploring subglacial lakes, AI-REEFSHIELD and SeaMe. FlatFish is a subsea-resident AUV for repeated inspection of oil and gas structures. It was developed with SENAI CIMATEC in Brazil, with BG Brasil as partner and EMBRAPII funding, and two identical vehicles were built. SherpaUW is a wheeled seabed rover with a 6-DOF manipulator, used in the MARIOW and UWS underwater welding projects. In July 2026 the UWS system made its first test welds under real conditions at Kaiserhafen III in Bremerhaven. That work was supported by bremenports and run with TH Koeln, Fraunhofer IGD and AMT GmbH under funding from the federal research ministry (BMFTR).
Other maritime projects include DeeperSense, which used deep learning to fuse sonar and camera data for underwater perception, REMARO (Reliable AI for Marine Robotics) and Mare-IT. In August 2026, during the IJCAI-ECAI conference in Bremen, the RIC hosted an Underwater Robotics AI Challenge for student teams in its large basin. At the same event, companies including EvoLogics, H2O Drones and Qualisys exhibited.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
SherpaTT
About 150 kg hybrid walking/driving rover with active suspension, manipulator arm, lidar and six electro-mechanical interfaces for modular payloads (TransTerrA).
Coyote III
12.5 kg micro rover with hybrid legged wheels and 10-15 kg payload capacity; used by Team BREMEN in ESA Space Resources Challenge for regolith excavation.
LuNiS (Lunar micro rover for Night Survival)
Terrestrial version of a semi-autonomous lunar micro rover being developed to survive the 14-day lunar night; fold-out solar panels, payload interface.
MANTIS
Six-limbed walking robot that walks on four legs while manipulating with two; research platform for multi-legged mobile manipulation in exploration.
SpaceClimber
Semi-autonomous free-climbing legged robot for exploring crater walls and bottoms on steep, uneven extraterrestrial terrain.
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Contact DFKI Robotics Innovation Center
WEBSITE
https://robotik.dfki-bremen.de/PHONE
+49 421 17845 0HEADQUARTERS
Germany
Company Facts
Founded
2006
Primary Role
Research Institute
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Europe
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Grant / Non-profit
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- DFKI Robotics Innovation Center
- Maritime Exploration Hall
- AUV Cuttlefish
- DeepLeng
- FlatFish resident AUV
- SherpaUW
- underwater manipulation
- underwater welding
- subglacial lake exploration
- underwater test basin
- Research Institute
- Unmanned Marine Vehicle
- AUV
- Subsea
- Education & Research
- Oil
- Gas & Energy
- Aerospace & Space
- Research Platform
