Dr. Arne Hamann

Please tell us what fascinates you most about research.
First of all, I am motivated by working on problems in the development of distributed hardware/software systems. The complexity of modern connected applications is extremely high. Building them efficiently and correctly requires new approaches and technologies which are often at the interfaces between various disciplines. This interdisciplinary research is challenging and extremely fascinating.

What makes research done at Bosch so special?
I am often asked this question by research colleagues from academia. At Bosch Research, we have succeeded in creating sufficient space for exploring and pursuing innovative approaches on the one hand and on the other hand, we are very well connected to our divisions enabling us to deploy the results achieved in actual product development. In this combination, Bosch Research is practically unique at international level.

What research topics are you currently working on at Bosch?
One key aspect of our research entails mastering complexity. And one question concerns, for example, how we can abstract technical details and specifics of the underlying distributed execution platform for function developers. Our engineers should be able to concentrate on the functional challenges. Mapping the functionalities and configuration of the distributed platform should be automated and tool-supported in such a way that specified Quality of Service (QoS) requirements are satisfied. In doing this, we can not only drastically improve development efficiency, but also allow simple porting of distributed functionalities to other platforms.

What are the biggest scientific challenges in your field of research?
At Bosch, we are very good at building resource-efficient embedded systems with QoS guarantees such as predictable real-time performance, for example. One of the greatest challenges is to extend this core competence to the area of general information technology (IT). This is essential as many modern Bosch products are distributed cyber-physical systems based on IT technology where end-to-end QoS guarantees play a central role. Examples include service-oriented middlewares in automotive and robotics, IoT and vehicle-to-X applications where some critical functionality is computed in the (edge) cloud or systems in connected manufacturing which use wireless communication protocols for coordinating production modules.

How do the results of your research become part of solutions "Invented for life"?
In the relatively abstract “computer science topics” we are working on, the influence of our research results is usually not directly apparent and cannot be experienced immediately by our customers. And that is exactly the way it should be: the software-intensive Bosch products to which we contribute should simply work and do their job. That is our contribution.