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About

Dieter Merkel is a leading researcher at the intersection of human-robot collaboration, augmented reality (AR), and digital twin technologies for industrial applications. His work focuses on enabling seamless, intuitive interaction between human workers and robotic systems in manufacturing and logistics environments. Merkel’s most influential contribution is his pioneering research on using human gaze as an indicator of visual focus-of-attention in dual reality human-robot collaboration (39 citations), demonstrating how eye-tracking can enhance collaborative efficiency. He has also made significant advances in applying AR for human-robot cooperation in aircraft assembly (17 citations), showing how smart glasses can serve both as assembly aids and communication tools for hybrid teams. More recently, Merkel has explored interactive digital twins for online planning and worker safety in intralogistics (9 citations), developing asset administration shells that enable safe, continuous coordination between production and logistics processes. His notable achievements include demonstrating distributed collaborative work through virtual reality-controlled robot arms across multiple sites, and developing WALL-ET, a social cognitive robot that assists workers with unergonomic tasks in warehouses. Merkel’s work has been recognized through multiple demonstration videos and extended abstracts, establishing him as a key innovator in bringing mixed reality technologies to practical industrial settings.