He is regarded as a pioneer in the field of e-learning in law and from 2005 to 2009 was a member of the Commission on Virtual Higher Education in Bavaria.

In addition, he is a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Technikwissenschaften (Acatech) (German Academy for Technological Sciences).

In 2010, Hilgendorf founded the Forschungsstelle Robotrecht, a well-known research centre addressing legal issues related to autonomous systems in industrial processes, transport and private life.

Autonomous driving raises questions of civil and criminal liability, protection of privacy and matters of registration for road use.

In 2016, he was appointed by Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt to serve on the German government's Ethics Commission on Autonomous Driving.

[7] Since 2019, Hilgendorf has been co-director of the newly founded Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (BIDT) situated in Munich.

Moreover, he was member of the European High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (EU HLEG on AI).

Many of his works have been translated into other languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Greek.