Bionic Intelligence
Tübingen Stuttgart
A collaboration of the University of Stuttgart, University of Tübingen, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, and Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, part of Cyber Valley.
part of
About Us
The Center for Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (BITS) will
support to establish a radically new approach for the tight integration of intelligent technological systems with humans. At its culmination, we will be able to overcome technical limitations of current treatment and support systems for neural diseases, compensating for deficiencies and restoring intelligent bodily functions. This will markedly reduce the ever-increasing societal burden of psychiatric and neurological diseases.
Human embodied intelligence results from the smart interplay between neural information processing and physical properties of the body, both tightly integrated in a closed-loop fashion. Such an interplay must be extended to systems that integrate humans with technology.
The BITS Center uniquely combines the complementary excellence of the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen and the associated Max Planck Institutes for Intelligent Systems and Biological Cybernetics as ideal setting and fits perfectly in the regional academic-industrial ecosystem.
current news
Pierre Schumacher receives RIG “Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award” at the German Robotics Conference 2026
Pierre Schumacher has been selected as one of the two recipients of the “RIG
Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award”, recognizing exceptional doctoral research in
robotics in Germany. The award was officially announced during the “RIG Heroes
Award Night 2026” at the German Robotics Conference 2026, organized by the
Robotics Institute Germany (RIG), in Cologne on March 12.
Cologne, 12 March 2026
ERC Consolidator Grant has been awared to Philipp Rothemund in the field of soft robotics and to Tobias Hauser for his project on tackling obsessive-compulsive disorders with personalized treatment
Philipp Rothemund aims to improve the controllability of soft robots. Whether artificial hands with an especially gentle touch or an endoscope that crawls through the intestines like a worm, robots made of soft materials could soon carry out tasks that are difficult for metal-based systems. Dr. Philipp Rothemund, assistant professor at the University of Stuttgart, seeks to simplify how soft robots are controlled.
In his new project CoNbI-OCD (Computational Neuroscience-based Interventions for OCD) Tobias Hauser, of Computational Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine and fellow of the German Center for Mental Health (DZPG) in Tübingen, tackles obsessive-compulsive disorder, aiming to fundamentally rethink the treatment.
The European Research Council (ERC) is funding both projects with one of its prestigious Consolidator Grants worth up to €2 million.
Stuttgart, 9 December 2025
[Picture: University of Stuttgart / Uli Regenscheit]
