Technical University Berlin

The course focuses on various land use and system dynamic topics to guide class discussions in the weekly seminar meetings. Lectures are watched outside of scheduled meeting times to maximize time for discussion and expansion of ideas in class. The topic focuses include the following: global urbanization dynamics, global land use and change, urbanization, global land take of urbanization, urban expansion, urbanization in regards to climate change, urban climate change economics (including subtopics of buildings emissions and urban heat), as well as urban transport. 

The course focuses on analogue drawing of real urban and natural motifs (urban/nature sketching). We focus on drawing techniques, knowledge of materials and examples from the rich world of illustration. With the help of exercises, different techniques and graphic languages are tried out, and your own style can gradually be discovered and developed. We will work outdoors directly on the motif as much as possible.

This seminar introduces the concept of epistemic injustice, when one is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The class starts by introducing the foundations for epistemic injustice as long described in feminist and critical race theory documents and continues by discussing three different interpretations. Then, newer concepts, such as testimonial smothering, wilful hermeneutical ignorance, gaslighting, and epistemic exploitation, are considered before conducting application case studies.

The course starts with introductory lectures about the most important topics related to space technologies. In parallel, practical training is given to develop specific engineering skills in mechanics, electronics, and programming that is necessary to conduct the hands-on project. A CanSat is a small satellite in shape of a commercial beverage can that performs several measuring tasks. In this course, a CanSat is designed, built and tested in the field during a rocket launch. Therefore, all basics of topics related to exciting area of space technologies is imparted and practical skills for the development of a CanSat are trained. The theoretical units are supplemented by practical exercises. During project work units, parts of a CanSat are designed with supervision in smaller groups. During a launch campaign, the CanSat is tested under real conditions.Parts of the CanSat are developed in intensely supervised small groups. The course is supplemented by an excursion to space related companies and institutions in Berlin, during which the participants gain insight into facilities used for the development of satellites. Participants should have a general understanding of engineering.

This lab course (Praktikum) trains in video encoding and transmission over communication networks. A particular focus will be on wireless and mobile networks, which are becoming increasingly important. After a successful completion the students are capable of encoding video clips, assessing the video quality using objective video quality metrics, and streaming the video. The students will further acquire the basics in the field of wireless communication - interference, broadcast communication medium, rate and power control. They will build up technical expertise on MAC and routing protocol behaviour in wireless mesh networking environments through various experiment set-up and performance evaluations.

In this course, you will create a graphical action game in Python. In the process, you will learn fundamental concepts and tools that programmers use. The course will guide you step by step from a first prototype to a working game. By the end of the course, you will deploy your game to a live website. No previous programming knowledge is required.

Biomechanics, as a growing field of engineering, has many applications in the health and sport sectors. This broad field of study includes the design of artificial implants, the development of human tissues in the lab, the measurement of human movement and the detection and treatment of pathological conditions, the understanding of the performance of our muscles and how to employ it in sport, the diagnosis of injuries, the imaging of biological tissues and the detection of their pathological state, etc. In this course, the fundamental principles of biomechanics and their application to real life situations will be covered including: basic understanding of the application of mechanical principles in biology, understanding of anatomical and biomechanical terminology, application of biomechanical principles to human movement, basic understanding of the mechanical properties of biological tissues and the techniques used to determine them, and more recent advanced topics such as mechanics of cells, tissue imaging and tissue engineering. Participants should have successfully completed courses in engineering mechanics and materials science and possess knowledge on programming software.

This lecture provides the basics of areodynamics of bluff bodies, ground vehicles and buildings. The focus is on passenger cars. The students will be enabled to analyze and identify sources of aerodynamics forces for these objects in order to improve performance, reduce energy consumption or to incease passenger comfort. The methods include wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulation (CFD). The students will be trained in reading and summarizing scientific publications through presentations.

The course deals with flows around blunt (bluff) bodies, which either move along the ground (e.g. automobiles, trucks, trains) or lie stationary in the path of a flow (e.g. buildings). The content include: - Introduction to the aerodynamics of blunt bodies. - Fundamental mechanisms for lift and drag of automobiles. - Methods of reducing drag by means of lift production. - Aspects to the design of automobiles taking into account the flow around and through the body. - Overview of numeric and experimental methods of investigation. - Introduction of the aerodynamics of high-speed trains - Introduction to aerodynamics of buildings and environment Experiments with a 25% scaled car model will be carried out in the large wind tunnel of the TU-Berlin.

In this course, the fundamentals of Python are covered, with a special focus on the skills necessary for in-depth data analyses and data visualization. These two skills are fundamental in a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and Humanities fields of study. This course will cover the following: data types and compound data structures, conditional statements and loops, Python functions, importing, exporting and analyzing different types of data using pandas, visualizing data using Matplotlib and Seaborn, and developing interactive plots with Plotly. At the end of the two weeks course, students will work and present a final personal data analytics and visualization project.

Motion planning is a fundamental building block for autonomous systems, with applications in robotics, industrial automation, and autonomous driving. After completion of the course, students will have a detailed understanding of: Formalization of geometric, kinodynamic, and optimal motion planning; Sampling-based approaches: Rapidly-exploring random trees (RRT), probabilistic roadmaps (PRM), and variants; Search-based approaches: State-lattice based A* and variants; Optimization-based approaches: Differential Flatness and Sequential convex programming (SCP); The theoretical properties relevant to these algorithms (completeness, optimality, and complexity). Students will be able to: Decide (theoretically and empirically) which algorithm(s) to use for a given problem; Implement (basic versions) of the algorithms themselves; • Use current academic and industrial tools such as the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL).

It provides a unified perspective on motion planning and includes topics from different research and industry communities. The goal is not only to learn the foundations and theory of currently used approaches, but also to be able to pick and compare the different methods for specific motion planning needs. An important emphasis is the consideration of both geometric and kinodynamic motion planning for the major algorithm types.