Dr. Stefan Kohlbrecher is Co-Founder and CTO of Energy Robotics, a Darmstadt-based AI software platform that empowers autonomous robots and drones to perform industrial inspections in critical infrastructure sectors.

Stefan earned his doctoral degree in Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automation Engineering from TU Darmstadt, where he later served as a PostDoc and led teams in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, ARGOS Challenge, and RoboCup Rescue competitions.

Stefan is the creator of Hector SLAM, one of the most widely used open-source algorithms for simultaneous localization and mapping in both research and industry, cementing his status as a globally recognized robotics innovator.

In 2023, Stefan accepted the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Award on behalf of Energy Robotics in the Robotics and Automation for Product Innovation category, reflecting the company's technical leadership under his guidance.

Energy Robotics has completed over one million autonomous inspections across five continents, saving clients more than 32,000 hours of hazardous human labor, and counts Shell, BP, BASF, Dow Chemical, and E.ON among its customers.