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About

Harald Kohlhoff is a pioneer at the intersection of robotics and environmental sensing, specializing in mobile robot olfaction and aerial gas tomography. His most transformative contribution is the development of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Remote Gas Sensing (UAV-REGAS), a novel platform that marries lightweight Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) sensors with agile mini-copters. This work, detailed in his highly cited 2017 paper (39 citations), revolutionized gas detection by enabling contactless, remote sensing of gas clouds from the air—a leap beyond traditional ground-based methods. Kohlhoff’s landmark 2019 study (28 citations) validated the first autonomous aerial system capable of reconstructing tomographic 2D slices of gas plumes in outdoor environments, effectively bringing “gas tomography up in the air.” This breakthrough allows for precise, real-time mapping of complex gas distributions, with profound implications for industrial safety, environmental monitoring, and disaster response. His earlier work on embedded control of PMSM servo drives (2016) further showcases his engineering depth, optimizing torque control for lightweight robotic platforms without current measurements. With a growing citation footprint, Kohlhoff stands as a visionary advancing how we perceive and interact with invisible atmospheric hazards.