Besides teaching the institute is highly involved in application orientated research. We offer lectures in "Engineering Drawing, Machine Elements, Design Engineering and Computer Aided Modelling" for students of the degree programmes "System Engineering, Production Engineering and Industrial Engineering".

Our research expertise is concentrated on the development of product constructed by renewable resources, glass fibre or carbon fibre materials. The main focus lies on the automatically positioning, draping and cutting of the textile fibres. Adjustment and cutting of the fibres is performed by the support of robots programmed with a predefined cutting and positioning plan.

In addition Prof. Thoben is the Head of the BIBA institute IKAP (ICT applications for production). The research unit IKAP prepares, develops and realises methods and tools to support co-operative, inter-organisational enterprise networks. The research concentrates on efficient and effective collaborative design and production processes by applying innovative information and communication technologies (ICT).