Axel Sauer

Ph.D. student

MPI for Intelligent Systems and University of Tübingen

About

Hi! I am a Ph.D. student at the Autonomous Vision Group at MPI for Intelligent Systems. Currently, I am interested in using inductive biases to make neural networks more causal.

Interests

Computer Vision
Causality
Generative Modelling

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Present
University of Tübingen
M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, 2018
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Top 5% of class, graduated with distinction
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, 2015
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Top 5% of class

Publications

Counterfactual Generative Networks

Published at ICLR 2021
Presented at the Causality in Vision Workshop, CVPR 2021 (oral)

Axel Sauer & Andreas Geiger

Project PDF Code Music Video Talk Blog

Zoomorphic Gestures for Communicating Cobot States

Published in Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
Presented at ICRA 2021

Vanessa Sauer, Axel Sauer, Alexander Mertens

Project PDF Video Press

How to Make Deep RL Work in Practice

Presented at the Deep RL workshop, NeurIPS 2020

Nirnai Rao*, Elie Aljalbout*, Axel Sauer*, Sami Haddadin (*Shared first authorship)

Project PDF Code Video

Tracking Holistic Object Representations

Published at BMVC 2019 (oral)
Best Science Paper Award. (1 out of 1008 submissions)

Axel Sauer*, Elie Aljalbout*, Sami Haddadin (*Shared first authorship)

Project PDF Supplementary Code Video Blog

Conditional Affordance Learning for Driving in Urban Environments

Published at CoRL 2018 (oral)
Nominated for the Best Systems Paper Award.

Axel Sauer, Nikolay Savinov, Andreas Geiger

Project PDF Supplementary Code Video Talk Blog

Experience

Research Associate, PhD Candidate

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

Apr 2020 – Present Tübingen, GER

Causality, Neural Networks, Generative Modelling

Research Associate, Scientific Staff

Technical University of Munich

Jun 2018 – Mar 2020 Munich, GER

Visual object tracking for robotic systems.

Visiting Researcher

ETH Zurich - Computer Vision and Geometry group

Nov 2017 – Apr 2018 Zurich, CHE

A new approach to autonomous driving.

Engineering Intern

Mercedes-Benz Japan - Alternative Drives

Mar 2017 – Sep 2017 Tokyo, JPN

Data analysis of the driving and charging behavior of electric vehicles.

Research Intern, Bachelor Thesis, Working Student

Daimler - Hybrid-/E-Drive & E-Motor

Apr 2015 – Mar 2017 Stuttgart, GER

CFD simulation of the coolant flow in electric machines.

Student Researcher

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - Institute of Vehicle System Technology

Dec 2013 – Aug 2014 Karlsruhe, GER

FEM simulation of fiber composite materials.