Privacy Notice for projects run by the ‘Kooperative Autonome Systeme’ research group at IAMLIS

Hochschule München (hereinafter also referred to as “the University”, “HM”, “we” or “us”) hereby provides information on the nature, scope, purposes and legal basis for the processing of your personal data in connection with projects carried out by the “Kooperative Autonome Systeme” research group at IAMLIS (hereinafter also referred to simply as “research projects” or “projects”). As part of these projects, concepts and pilot applications for end-to-end automated driving in urban areas are being developed, amongst other things.

IAMLIS is an institute at the university which brings together expertise in machine learning and intelligent systems as part of the digitalisation strategy, thereby facilitating interdisciplinary research into novel applications and methods.

The “Intelligent Vehicles Lab” is the laboratory for intelligent vehicles within IAMLIS. It is dedicated to the development of intelligent and safe transport systems. One of its main areas of research is the management of vulnerable road users (VRUs) and other road users in the context of autonomous driving. The lab’s work involves developing algorithms and software capable of recognising, analysing, tracking and predicting the behaviour of road users in complex urban environments, in order to enable robust trajectory planning. The lab collaborates with industry partners to test its solutions in real-world environments, with the aim of advancing the state of the art in autonomous driving technology.

Nature and scope

As part of research projects into autonomous driving, recordings are made by a vehicle participating in road traffic. The LiDAR, image and video recordings (hereinafter referred to as ‘sensor data’) are captured using camera and LiDAR sensors mounted on the vehicle and include, amongst other things, images of faces and other physical characteristics, as well as vehicle registration numbers, of people participating in road traffic. However, the identification of individual people who may be present in the traffic scenes is neither the primary focus nor the intended purpose. Nevertheless, the processing of personally identifiable information is necessary within the scope of the projects in order to achieve the research objectives. Anonymising the sensor data – such as blurring faces after recording – is not possible for technical reasons, as this would distort the images and result in an undesirable adverse effect on the machine learning algorithms.

Purposes and legal basis

The sensor data collected is processed for research purposes in the field of autonomous driving, including to improve the environmental perception of autonomous vehicles, to develop autonomous driving functions for robots and passenger cars, and to achieve the research objectives described above. In this context, the sensor data is used for object recognition and behaviour recognition.

The legal basis for the processing of sensor data for the aforementioned purposes is: Article 6(2) and (3), Article 6(1)(e) of the GDPR in conjunction with Article 4(1) of the Bavarian Data Protection Act (BayDSG) in conjunction with Article 2(2), second sentence, Article 3 and Article 12 of the Bavarian Higher Education Act (BayHIG) (research), Article 2(1), second sentence; Articles 76 et seq. of the Bavarian Higher Education Act (BayHIG) (studies and teaching), Article 2(2), third sentence, of the Bavarian Higher Education Act (BayHIG) (cooperation with industry and technology transfer) and Article 6(2) of the Bavarian Higher Education Act (BayHIG) (research cooperation), taking into account the research privilege under data protection law pursuant to Article 89 of the GDPR in conjunction with Article 25 of the Bavarian Data Protection Act (BayDSG)

The legal basis for the publication of non-anonymised data in accordance with Article 25(3) of the Bavarian Data Protection Act (BayDSG) is consent pursuant to Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR.

Recipients of personal data

The sensor data is processed on the devices installed in the research vehicles and on the university’s servers. Access to the sensor data is restricted to the research team, which comprises the relevant students in the case of bachelor’s degree or Master’s degree theses, the relevant PhD candidates and their Supervisors in the case of doctoral research, and the cooperation partners in the case of research collaborations.

Upon request and following verification that the relevant conditions have been met, the sensor data is transferred to other research institutions outside the university for exclusively non-commercial research purposes. The legal basis for such a transfer is Article 5(1) of the Bavarian Data Protection Act (BayDSG). The processing of the sensor data provided is subject to compliance with applicable national and European data protection law.

In the case of research projects funded by third-party funding, the measured data may be provided to the third-party funders in pseudonymised form at their request.

Research findings will only be published in anonymised form. This means that it is effectively impossible to identify individual persons with a reasonable amount of effort.

Data is not processed in third countries, nor are any automated decisions made.

Retention and deletion

Personal data shall be erased once it is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or otherwise processed. This means that it will only be stored for as long as is necessary to fulfil the relevant tasks, in accordance with statutory retention periods. Personal data collected as part of research projects is generally retained for a period of ten years following the completion of the project. In this case, a review will be carried out after ten years to determine whether the sensor data is still required for the purposes described above. If this is not the case, it will be deleted.

Further information

If you have any questions regarding the processing of your data, please feel free to contact the Data Protection Officer (datenschutzbeauftragter@hm.edu ).

Further information on data protection, in particular regarding your rights as a data subject and details of the data controller, can be found at the following link: https://hm.edu/datenschutz .

Last updated: 7 February 2024

The information on this page was translated into English for your convenience. In case of any discrepancies between the English and German versions, the German version shall prevail.