# Jan R. Seyler

> Head of Advanced Development Analytics & Control at Festo SE & Co. KG. General Chair IAAI 2025 (AAAI). Industrial AI, Embedded AI, Physical AI, Autonomous Systems.

## About

Jan R. Seyler leads 38 engineers across Stuttgart, Bangalore, and Moldova at Festo SE & Co. KG, one of Europe's largest industrial automation companies (~3.5B EUR revenue). He has full accountability for AI strategy, R&D budget governance, make-or-buy decisions, and technology roadmapping, with outputs reviewed at CEO and Supervisory Board level.

He has served IAAI (Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence) — the AAAI-affiliated conference and the world's definitive venue for deployed, real-world AI — as General Chair (2025), Co-Chair (2024), and Outreach Chair (2023, 2026). He advises the German Federal Government on AI strategy at Digital-Gipfel level and serves on Plattform Lernende Systeme, Germany's national AI policy board.

## Key Projects

- **Festo Virtual Assistant**: GPT-4 powered assistant deployed globally across Festo's product portfolio (2023)
- **GripperAI**: RL-based robotic picking system deployed at Würth Logistics, handling 1M+ SKUs (2023)
- **Festo–Nvidia Isaac Sim**: Digital-twin simulation for AI-driven industrial robot development
- **FLAIROP**: Federated learning for industrial pick-and-place (Festo + KIT + DarwinAI/Canada)
- **Rapid²**: Internal AI rapid-prototyping platform connected to Nvidia Omniverse/Isaac Sim
- **Festo AI Centre of Excellence**: Built from 0 to 25 professionals

## Research

189+ citations, 30+ papers, 3 patents. Published at ICRA, IROS, ETFA, ICAART, DATE, RTAS, AI Magazine (Wiley).

Research areas: reinforcement learning, physical AI, autonomous systems, graph neural networks for human-robot collaboration, physics-informed ML, multi-agent systems, energy-efficient control, precision motion, sensor replacement through model-based estimation.

## Advisory & Speaking

- General Chair IAAI 2025, Co-Chair IAAI 2024, Outreach Chair IAAI 2023 & 2026
- Speaker at Digital-Gipfel (German Federal Government, 2023–2024)
- Expert advisor at Plattform Lernende Systeme (national AI policy board)
- Keynote speaker: Hannover Messe (2024, 2026), Industrial AI Conference, Konstruktionsleiterforum
- Lecturer: Applied AI (HS Esslingen), Real-Time Systems & IoT (DHBW Stuttgart)

## Education

- PhD thesis work in Software Engineering, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg / Daimler AG (2012–2014)
- Diplom-Mathematiker (Scientific Computing), Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, grade 1.6

## Links

- Website: https://jrs1986.github.io
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jan-r-seyler
- GitHub: https://github.com/JRS1986
- Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=Jjsg6h4AAAAJ
- X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JRS_1986