“Research is the backbone of Artisense’ future products!”

Within our blog series “faces of Artisense” this week we talked to Niclas Zeller, Teamlead Re-Localization. 

Thomas: Hi Niclas, you are the lead of our Re-Localization team which has a huge research focus. What are you and your team mainly working on?

Niclas:  Let’s maybe start with a quick intro on what we at Artisense mean when we talk about re-localization. This basically means that we want to be able to localize ourselves in an existing map at any time. Ideally, this should be possible without any GNSS support. Why is this? Because our use case is the global localization in any environment for automotive and robotic applications, which includes also GPS denied scenarios like tunnels, urban canyons or parking garages for example.

Thomas: Do you have a product vision in the field of re-localization?
                If yes, how does it look like?

Niclas: Yes, we do. Our goal is - that with our cutting edge technology - we will be able to localize to centimeter-accurate pinpoint within a map. We also aim to do so no matter under which lightning or weather conditions. All we want to use for this very precise localization are standard cameras. 

Research is the backbone of our future products!

Niclas Zeller, Team-Lead Re-Localization

Thomas: What would you consider the biggest challenges in terms of leadership? 

Niclas: One of our key challenges is to stay flexible and to adapt our research- & development roadmap based on the customer feedback we get. Especially for our re-localization team, I see my biggest task to strategically align our research activities in order to have a product-focused research team. Innovative research is the backbone of our future products, this is something I’m deeply convinced of. 

Thomas: How would you describe your leadership style Niclas?

Niclas: I took over the role as a team lead just a few months ago, so I’m still fairly new to this. Nevertheless, I have a pretty clear idea of how I want to lead & work with the people in my team. 
One of my principles is leading by example. If you don’t live up to your own expectations how would people follow you? Besides this, I want to lead the team with a vision. This allows self-organized teams, who take over responsibility and come up with independent and innovative ideas. 

Thomas: Last but not least I would like to know: What is - according to you - the biggest USP of Artisense?

Niclas: From my point of view, our key differentiator is our SLAM algorithm. It is the core of our Visual Inertial System (VINS) which allows precise global localization.  
Next to the technology, I think also the close interlocking of product development and research in a particular area is something that is pretty unique at Artisense.

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