📍 Hochschule Ruhr West, Lützowstr. 5, 46236 Bottrop, Germany
Research · Publications · Repositories · People · Projects
HRW NeuroLab is an AI-focused research lab at Hochschule Ruhr West in Bottrop. Supported by various funding projects dealing with
Digitalization,Environmental Sustainability, andCircular Economy, our goal is to transfer the latest theoretical concepts to real industrial challenges and help SMEs develop their expertise in those fields.
Combining Vision, Language, and Action to harness robots for complex tasks such as disassembly of electronic waste items.
Robotics VLM VLA
We build Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Layers around local LLMs, showing SMEs how they can efficiently manage and query their company-specific knowledge.
RAG Knowledge Base Local LLMs
With our expertise in the field of object recognition, we support the development of efficient sorting operations in manufacturing or recycling processes.
Detection Segmentation Finetuning
Our (scientific) work is shared through peer-reviewed publications, and reusable research artifacts.
| Year | Publication | Venue / Journal | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | MixMatchDet: Mixing and Matching Tokens for Plain ViT Detectors D. Rohrschneider, A. Haselhoff, and U. Handmann |
GCPR 2026 | |
| 2026 | From Chat to Grasp Using LLM-Controlled Dual Robot Arm J. Stehr, N. Abou Baker, and U. Handmann |
ROBOVIS 2026 | |
| 2026 | The Hidden Price Tag Behind LLMs and Their Environmental Cost N. Abou Baker and U. Handmann |
ICPRAM 2026 | DOI |
| 2026 | ClimateCV: The potential of Computer Vision Applications in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation N. Abou Baker and U. Handmann |
SUSTECH 2026 | DOI |
| 2026 | LLM-based JSON Mapping and Blockchain Integration for Digital Product Passports D. Rohrschneider, M. Pehlke, U. Handmann, and M. Jansen |
Digital Business | DOI |
| 2025 | Rethinking Model Selection Beyond ImageNet Accuracy for Waste Classification N. Abou Baker and U. Handmann |
ICPRAM 2025 | DOI |
| 2024 | One size does not fit all: Benchmarking modelselection scores for image classification N. Abou Baker and U. Handmann |
Scientific Reports | DOI |
| 2024 | Parameter-efficient fine-tuning of large pretrained models for instance segmentation tasks N. Abou Baker, D. Rohrschneider, and U. Handmann |
Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction | DOI |
| 2023 | Double transfer learning to detect lithium-ion batteries on x-ray images D. Rohrschneider, N. Abou Baker, and U. Handmann |
IWANN 2023 | DOI |
| 2023 | Don't waste SAM N. Abou Baker and U. Handmann |
ESANN 2023 | DOI |
| 2023 | Battery detection of xray images using transfer learning N. Abou Baker, D. Rohrschneider, and U. Handmann |
ESANN 2022 | DOI |
Selected research materials and artifacts from the lab.
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Official Implementation for MixMatchDet: Mixing and Matching Tokens for Plain ViT Detectors. 
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PIE turns unstructured product text into structured JSON records.
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The people behind our work.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Uwe Handmann Principal Investigator Professor for Neuroinformatics and Twin Transition Expert ↗ |
Dr.-Ing. Nermeen Abou Baker Researcher / Postdoc Computer Vision
Transfer Learning
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David Rohrschneider Researcher / PhD Candidate Computer Vision
Digital Product Passports
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Jonas Stehr Researcher / PhD Candidate VL / VLA Models
Physical AI
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Felix Grün Researcher / PhD Candidate Reinforcement Learning
Computer Vision
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Priyanka Kattishetti Researcher Retrieval Augmented Generation
Sustainability Management
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Timon Henke Researcher Software Engineering
Microcontroller Programming
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Yi-Sheng Hsu Researcher Natural Language Processing
Retrieval Augmented Generation
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| Programme | Project | Period | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| EFRE/JTF 2021-2027 | easy.dpp.nrw | 2025–2028 | Project page |
| EFRE/JTF 2021-2027 | Transferhub — Digitalisierung und Circular Economy im Prosperkolleg | 2024–2027 | Project page |
| EFRE/JTF 2021-2027 | #dzr | digital.zirkulär.ruhr | 2024–2027 | Project page |
| EFRE/JTF 2021-2027 | Circular Performer Emscher-Lippe | 2024–2027 | Project page |
We are interested in both research and transfer collaborations across computer vision, robotics, local LLMs and RAG, as well as topics around digitalization and circular economy!
Have a question, idea, dataset, or project to discuss?
