Videos of all talks have been updated here

Objectives

Bimanual manipulation is essential for robots to reach human level manipulation dexterity. The involvement of the second robot arm is believed to greatly increase the dexterity and flexibility of robot manipulation and therefore to open new directions for both research and real world applications. But it is still a problem to identify the challenges in general and in modules which have slowed down or blocked this kind of novelty benefiting human beings? It is clear that we cannot focus on solving purely issues at the components level. We need a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective of robotic bimanual manipulation. Therefore it is important for roboticists from both academic and industrial community to join efforts together to review, re-investigate, reshape and pave the way to advance the field of research. To navigate our discussion,  we prepared the following question to be answered in the workshop.

For the sake of real-world application:

• How to coordinate motion of two arms in a synergistic way that takes task constraints into account?

• How to best exploit the roles of arms for different functions, sensing, grasping, manipulation, exploration, etc?

• How to optimize the combination of uni-manual and bi-manual manipulation behaviors? 

• How to efficiently plan and control a dual-arm platform on a mobile base? 

• How to design the manipulation process in an intuitive way for a given task?

• How to transfer human bimanual manipulation skills to robots? 

• What kind of sensor modalities are useful for bimanual manipulation? 

• How to model the cooperation between human and robots so that the task can be implemented in an optimal way by taking into consideration the human preferences?

• How could computing tools, such as neural networks (including deep learning), be a game changer for the dual/multi arm coordination and manipulation?

• How would all kinds of mobile platforms contribute to the efficiency of the bimanual manipulation?

• How can bimanual manipulation benefit from multiple fingered hand grasping, humanoid robots?

Topics of Interests

• Bio-inspired/human-inspired bimanual manipulation theories and studies

• Bimanual manipulation task coordination and planning

• Bimanual manipulation task sensing and learning

• Bimanual manipulation control for robot arms and hands

• Bimanual (loco-)manipulation with various mobile platforms, wheels, legged, wheel-leg hybrid, etc.

• System communication and optimization for effective bimanual manipulation

• Robot mechanics and electronics for bimanual

• manipulation setup

• Bimanual manipulation applied in manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, maintenance & inspection, etc.

• Multi-arm manipulation beyond dual-arm bimanual manipulation

Workshop Date and Schedule

Hybrid Mode - Online and Onsite

EDT: 8:30AM-17:45PM, May 27th 2022 

CET: 2:30PM-23:45PM, May 27th 2022

Hong Kong/Beijing: 20:30PM May 27th 2022-5:45AM May 28th 2022

Japan/Korea: 21:30PM May 27th 2022-6:45AM May 28th 2022

Special Issues

IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics Focused Section on "Design, Modeling, Learning and Control for Bimanual Manipulation Mechatronics" is call for submissions.

Important Dates:

Paper Submission                                                                                 Sep. 1, 2022

Completion of First Review                                                                     Dec. 1, 2022

Submission of Revised Papers                                                         Jan. 15, 2023

Completion of Final Review                                                                    Mar. 1, 2023

Submission of Final Manuscripts and Copyright Forms                 Apr. 30, 2023

Publication                                                                                                  Jun., 2023

Guest Editors:

Sylvain Calinon, Guest Editor (Idiap Research Institute) Email: sylvain.calinon@idiap.ch

Fei Chen, Guest Editor (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Email: f.chen@ieee.org

Miao Li, Guest Editor (Wuhan University) Email: miao.li@whu.edu.cn

Nadia Figueroa, Guest Editor (University of Pennsylvania) Email: nadiafig@seas.upenn.edu

Hang Yin, Guest Editor (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) Email: hyin@kth.se

João Silvério, Guest Editor (German Aerospace Center) Email: joao.silverio@dlr.de

Aude Billard, Guest Editor (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) Email: aude.billard@epfl.ch

Submission:

Manuscripts should be submitted online at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tmech-ieee. The cover letter should report the following statement: “This paper is submitted for possible publication in the Focused Section on Design, Modeling, Learning and Control for Bimanual Manipulation Mechatronics”. Fore more details, please refer to: http://www.ieee-asme-mechatronics.info/focus-sections/.

Workshop Organizers

• Fei Chen, Assistant Professor, T-Stone Robotics Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR | Department of Advanced Robotics, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy.  Email: f.chen@ieee.org (main contact)

• Miao Li, Associate Professor, Wuhan University, China. Email: miao.li@whu.edu.cn

• Sylvain Calinon, Senior Researcher, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland. Email: sylvain.calinon@idiap.ch

• Nadia Figueroa, Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Email: nadiafig@mit.edu 

• Jihong Zhu, Post-doc, TU Delft/Honda Research Institute Europe, Netherlands/Germany. Email: j.zhu-3@tudelft.nl

• Maria Bauza Villalonga, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.  Email: bauza@mit.edu

Support TC

We are grateful for the support of the following organizations:

• Mobile Manipulation

• Robot Learning

• Robotic Hands, Grasping and Manipulation

• Collaborative Automation for Flexible Manufacturing

• Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion