Research and Technology Center North America

At our research lab in Sunnyvale, we develop advanced robotics technologies with our collaboration partners. These efforts enable new capabilities for service robotics, which we implement into current and future Bosch products.

As the U.S. footprint of robotics research at Bosch, we provide regional insights and scouting by collaborating closely with organizations in Silicon Valley. With leading partners in academia and industry, we strive to advance the field of service robotics with a variety of applications in advanced manufacturing, logistics and personal assistance.

In our Cambridge location, we contribute to research on additive manufacturing to advance the industrialization and adoption of additive manufacturing technologies. We collaborate with leading industrial and academic partners to study multiple 3D-printing processes using multi-scale multi-physics simulation and real-time process monitoring.

Additive Manufacturing is experiencing rapid growth as related technologies evolve from those for prototyping to those for production. To feed the cutting-edge technology development into Bosch, we drive the North American scouting and assessment of new Additive Manufacturing technologies emerging from academia, startups, and industry.

Batteries and Fuel Cells. In our Sunnyvale and Cambridge locations, we develop clean electrochemical technologies for electrified vehicles and products. Our team works with leading academic groups and startups to identify factors that improve battery and fuel-cell performance, reliability, and affordability.

Our research focuses on the application of physical models to enable reliable virtual design of electrochemical systems. We develop computational tools from the atom to the system scale to understand the behavior and interaction of energy materials. These materials are synthesized and optimized in our labs, then integrated into devices for in-house testing.

We also incorporate our electrochemical models into management system software that optimizes battery and fuel cell performance in real time without accelerating the aging process. Our algorithms are implemented in many Bosch products, from electric vehicles to power tools.

Through the Bosch Energy Research Network (BERN), Bosch supports and collaborates with university researchers on 21st century energy challenges. BERN has supported dozens of graduate students and interns through research grants to university faculty, connecting academic experts with Bosch engineers for collaborations on exciting new technologies.

BERN provided a modest grant in 2013 to Professor Huei Peng of University of Michigan for his work on expanding advanced power-split transmissions in hybrid lightweight trucks. By 2015, collaboration with Bosch research and production partners resulted in a $5 million grant from the US Department of Energy. Since 2017, that research has evolved into customer engagement and commercial production.

In our Pittsburgh location, the Security and Privacy Research team explores privacy-enhancing technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as embedded system security, secure hardware and novel methodologies to guarantee trustworthy environments. As computers increasingly mediate our real-world interactions, the Security and Privacy Research team aims to make today’s networked computers safe enough to trust with this responsibility.

Our competences include design and implementation of cryptographic primitives, Physical-Unclonable-Functions and cryptography in the presence of noise, two-party and multi-party computation, privacy for data mining, design of searchable encryption schemes, design of novel and user friendly authentication methodologies, efficient implementation of cryptographic primitives, RFID security, system security, wireless security and network security.

In our Sunnyvale location, the Wireless Connectivity Group focuses on implementing and developing wireless technologies to drive innovative Bosch products. Wireless connectivity is a key enabler of IoT applications, and the Wireless Connectivity Group researches innovations that deliver superior cost efficiency, reliability, safety and convenience in existing and new markets. Through our innovative research, we serve all Bosch business verticals. Our active areas of research include protocols, algorithm and system design for ultra-low power wireless networks, in-car wireless networks, intelligent wireless networks, wireless localization and RF sensing.

In our Sunnyvale location, we also research sensor technologies that will drive and enable the IoT, autonomous-driving and advanced driver assistance systems of the future. Our research encompasses the development of complex systems-on-a-chip (SoC) that enhance sensor performance in the areas of speed, precision, intelligence and cost. Our active areas of research include silicon-photonics sensors, LiDAR, RADAR, CMOS imagers and intelligent sensors that use machine learning. The goal of our Integrated Circuits (IC) team is to deliver technologies that open new markets and give a competitive edge to future Bosch products.

In our Sunnyvale location, the BioASICs team focuses on developing Integrated Circuits solutions for next-generation medical diagnostics and life-science tools. Our team aims to develop solid-state semiconductor solutions for fundamental diagnostics issues, including selectivity and sensitivity. Our research also involves high-throughput precision control in a platform compatible with standard biotech tools. This allows for faster and more-accurate tests, developed at a higher speed and at a lower cost.

In our Sunnyvale location, we are evaluating and prototyping new sensor technologies and concepts with applications in health and vital sensing. In the heart of Silicon Valley, we are scouting new topics and harvesting ideas from the local landscape, keeping Bosch at the forefront of research and development.

Our team integrates new materials into MEMS devices and looks for ways to incorporate these devices into new and complex systems. Close collaborations with researchers at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and other universities across the U.S. fuel fresh and innovative ideas.

In our Sunnyvale location, we employ cutting-edge cross-domain and multi-physics modeling for virtual product engineering. Our Computational Fluid Dynamics tools create accurate and detailed simulations of systems with reacting flows, providing valuable insight beyond what is achievable using current sensing tools.

Our team’s computational fluid-dynamics simulations are based on advanced Large Eddy Simulation methods. Examples of our work include volume-of-fluids methods for injector sprays, flamelet-based combustion models for emissions reduction, and boundary-element methods for far-field acoustic information, cavitation and corrosion models.

User Experience (UX) is a key differentiator in a market where many products and technologies are becoming commodities. Our global Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) research team is headquartered in Sunnyvale. It joins forces with Bosch HMI research teams in Germany, China and other U.S. locations to develop intuitive, interactive and intelligent solutions that inspire the UX for Bosch products.
In our Sunnyvale and Pittsburgh locations, HMI research focuses on conversational AI, augmented reality, visual analytics, text and audio mining, personal assistance and smart wearables. Our research is applied in areas such as autonomous driving, car infotainment, driver-assistance systems, industrial IoT, security systems, smart buildings, healthcare and robotics.
We work with internal partners to implement these innovations into future Bosch products. We also actively collaborate with leading groups in academia and industry to promote research ideas at major conferences and publish research findings in top journals.