† Georg Färber
Prof. Dr.-Ing.
Former professor of real-time computing (RTC)
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology
born 6 April, 1940
died 4 November, 2023
Interview with TUM Emeritus of Excellence Georg Färber
"The hurdles were pretty high"
Successful entrepreneur and internationally renowned scientist at the same time: Georg Färber mastered this challenge. In the role of TUM Emeritus of Excellence he is still a highly valued advisor to his Alma Mater. [read more]
CV
Georg Färber did his doctorate on the information capacity of nervous tissue in order to turn his attention to the regulation of technical processes, with a particular focus on distributed and fault-tolerant systems. Precipitated by a study in 1980, which he co-authored, on microelectronics in mechanical engineering, more than 1,000 employees of diverse mechanical engineering firms were instructed on this topic. In the 1980s, Georg Färber expanded his field of activity to include real-time image and video processing for mobile robots; the robots Marvin, Minerva, Lpi and Lpi-2 emerged from the Robot Vision Group. Within the scope of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Collaborative Research Centres (SFB), he developed methods and tools to design and verify “embedded real-time systems” from 1991. Later, the focus of the image and video processing group shifted to automotive applications: robust image and video processing secures the environment information necessary for driver assistance and autonomous driving. Within the scope of this work, a real-time-enabled structure for the integration of cognitive function and a bioanalog vehicle camera emerged – the visual perception ability of which improves with use. Together with co-operative partners, they succeeded in entering the final round of the international competition of autonomous robotic vehicles, the DARPA Urban Challenge, in 2007. In addition to this, Georg Färber was involved with numerous projects on the subject of e-health. As well as his work as an academic, Georg Färber was also a successful businessman. Among other things, he founded, together with his brother, the company PCS in 1969 and developed the CADMUS workstation, which served for many years as the only European alternative to US machinery, and in 1985 he received the Elektronik- Innovationspreis. With his research in the fields of processors and realtime computer systems, autonomous robotics as well as cognitive vehicles, he achieved results that were recognized throughout the world. Since 2011, Prof. Färber has been an ombudsman at TUM and spokesperson for TUM’s Emeriti of Excellence.
Short biography
| 1959 – 1964 | Studies in electrical engineering, TH Munich |
| 1967 | Doctorate in electrical engineering, TH Munich |
| 1969 | Establishment of the company PCS |
| 1988 – 1989 | Technical director of Mannesmann Kienzle GmbH |
| 2005 – 2007 | Director of the Director of the Institute of Medical Engineering at TUM (IMETUM) |
| 1973 – 2008 | Professor of real-time computing, TUM |
Memberships and honors
Member of TUM’s senate (1992-1994)
Member of the senate committee Collaborative Reseach Centres of the German Research Foundation (1991-1996)
Member of the Munich Circle, a non-profit, international association for research in communication (since 1975)
Member of the advisory committee on electronic data processing systems in the Max Planck Society (BAR) (1982-2002)
Member of the board of directors of the of the Bavarian third-level collaboration center for Eastern Europe (BAYKONOST) (since 2002)
Member of TUM’s senate and board of management (2003-2007)
Member of the board of trustees of the Fraunhofer-Institut für Informations- und Datenverarbeitung Member of various committees of the German Council of Science and Humanities Member of the board of trustees of the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI), Karlsruhe
Member of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), Munich
Active/former member of various industrial supervisory boards (Sick AG, Softing AG, SEP AG, TTTech Computertechnik AG, Kontron AG, Oerlikon AG)
Founding spokesperson for the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 331: Information processing in autonomous, mobile handling systems (from 1986)
Representative spokesperson for the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 462: Sensomotorik (from 1991)
Founding spokesperson for the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 453: Virtual telepresence and teleoperation (from 1999)
Spokesperson for the Research Cooperation for Bioanalogical Assistant Systems (FORBIAS) of the Bavarian Research Foundation (2004-2007)
Representative spokesperson of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 28 (since 2006)
Spokesperson of the TUM Senior Excellence Faculty (2010 - 2015)
Ombudsperson of the TU Munich (2011 - 2016)
Awards
- Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medal from TUM (2004)
You can download "Explanations of honors and awards" here [PDF 215 KB]