] Starting with the research of G. Bogelsack in the 1970s, the analysis
of biological locomotion andmanipulation systemsandtheirtechnical
realizationhas beenan- portant research eld within the Faculty of
Mechanical Engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology. In 1996,
the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the Innovation College
"Motion Systems" at the University of Jena in a coope- tion with
engineers at the Ilmenau University of Technology. Thus, research was
able to be intensi ed and extended. Of course, the whole spectrum of
biologically inspired systems is much too wide, so the analysis was
still focused on locomotion and manipulation systems. At this stage J.
Steigenberger from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural S- ences at
the Ilmenau University of Technology contributed important studies of
worm-like locomotion systems with much dedication and technical
competence. Moreover, he conceived and carried out a lecture series
entitled "Mathematical Basics for Locomotion Systems", which was based
on his evaluation of national and international research developments in
this eld. I. Zeidis and K. Zimmermann contributed many publications on
the mechanics of worm-like locomotion systems based on continuum and
rigid-body models as well as asymptotic methods. Since 2004 the German
Research Foundation has supported a series of projects led by K.
Zimmermann dedicated to biologically inspired robotics. In addition to
these activities, the Department of Technical Mechanics and the
Department of Computer Application in Mechanical Engineering (M. Weiß)
together with masters and doctoral students started the development of
mobile robots for the RoboCup Small-Size League in 1998.
