Research at the institute is concerned with fundamental problems of information processing that are solved by organisms and their nervous systems. Artificial autonomous systems are confronted with these same problems. Our goal is to understand the organizational principles through which nervous systems solve these problems and to form these principles into new solutions to problems of information processing in technical systems. We do this around the exemplary areas of artificial action (autonomous robotics), artificial perception (computer vision) and artificial cognition. Industrial applications are pursued in driver assistance systems, face recognition, medical engineering, and geophysical remote sensing. Our methods come primarily from the mathematical theory of neural networks, the theory of stochastic dynamical systems, and the theory of learning.