News:

Participation in the Hannover Messe 2026

At the Hannover Messe 2026, a world-leading industrial trade fair, the Technical University of Ilmenau and the Landespatentzentrum Thüringen (Thuringian State Patent Centre, PATON) will present vivid examples of our work.

Our department is participating in the presentation again this year.
The "PropPlane" project will be showcasing a prototype autonomous drone for inspecting our road network. During its flight, the drone precisely measures roads to identify damage. Immediate feedback allows road users to be warned and repairs to be planned.

Update:
Thuringian Prime Minister Mario Voigt and Economics Minister Colette Boos-John also attended the trade fair to learn how our ideas are being implemented in practice.

--> more information about our university’s trade fair appearance.
--> visit of the Thuringian Minister-President and the Minister of Economic Affairs
--> media response: inSüdthüringen, mdr, Ostthüringer Zeitung
 

Report in the Deutschlandfunk podcast "Forschung Aktuell"

The work of the team with our colleague Aleksandra Beliautsou has been further publicized through the Deutschlandfunk podcast.
The podcast episode "Changing Perspectives for Greater Safety: Drones in Road Traffic" (german only) was created as part of the reporting on noteworthy research projects.

--> If you missed the episode on September 3, 2025, at 4:40 PM on Deutschlandfunk, you can listen to it again, for example, via the ARD Mediathek or directly on Deutschlandfunk.

Research

The System and Software Engineering group deals with methods, applications and tools for the design of complex technical systems and software.
Elements of these systems often come from the areas of mechatronics and electrical engineering, with an increasing proportion of software. In important industrial application fileds of embedded systems, such as automation and automotive systems, an interdisciplinary and holistic view is necessary.
From the point of view of information technology, software engineering plays a prominent role, but cannot be seen in isolation from the development process of the surrounding system. Training, methods and tools for successful engineering solutions must reflect this connection.

The main topic of the work is the model-based engineering of automation and embedded systems. Such technical applications in computer science contain hardware and software elements and cannot be designed with the tools of classic software engineering alone. The interface between computer science, electrical engineering and automation technology makes the subject area an important current challenge with high future potential for the graduates.
The central point of systematic system and software engineering are computer-internal models and the procedural methods that use them.

iStockphoto / monsitj
TU Ilmenau / Michael Reichel (ari)

Teaching

The SSE group offers courses in the areas of software technology and system design, which are primarily aimed at the degree courses Informatik, Ingenieurinformatik, Wirtschaftsinformatik as Research in Computer and Systems Engineering (RCSE).

benoa/iStockphoto

New Publications

Mehreen Khan and Armin Zimmermann:
Accuracy-Adaptive Speedup of Indirect Optimization Heuristics.
IEEE Int. Systems Conference (SysCon 2026), Halifax, April 2026 (accepted for publication).

V. Beliautsou, V. Ivanov and A. Fedorova:
Arrangement and method for determining parameters of a roadway in front of a vehicle.
European Patent EP4386501, 2026.
[ EPO register ]

Andreas Hildbrandt and Armin Zimmermann:
PFD Calculation of Multi-Channel Safety Functions Considering the Demand Rate.
Proc. 72th Annual Reliability & Maintainability Symposium (RAMS 2026), January 2026, Miramar Beach, USA.

all publications