Keynotes

Antonio Bicchi is Senior Scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and the Chair of Robotics at the University of Pisa. He leads the Robotics Group at the  Research Center "E. Piaggio'' of the University of Pisa since 1990. He is the head of the SoftRobotics Lab for Human Cooperation and Rehabilitation at IIT in Genoa. Since 2013 he serves ad Adjunct Professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering of Arizona State University.

His main research interests are in Robotics, Haptics, and Control Systems. He has published more than 500 papers on international journals, books, and refereed conferences. For his fundamental research on human and robot hands the European Research Council awarded him with several grants, including an Advanced Grant in 2012, an ongoing Synergy Grant in 2019, and three Proof-of-Concept grants. From January, 2023, he is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Robotics Reserach (IJRR), the first scientific journal in Robotics. He has been the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters  (2015-2019). He has organized the first WorldHaptics Conference (2005), today the premier conference in the field. He is a founder and President of the Italian Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM) (since 2019).

Title: Variable stiffness motor control in humans, robots, and prosthetics

Abstract: In animals and in humans, the mechanical impedance of limbs changes not only in dependence of the task, but also during different phases of the execution of a task. Part of this variability is intentionally controlled, by either co-activating muscles or by changing the arm posture, or both. In robots, impedance can be varied by varying controller gains, stiffness of hardware parts, and arm postures. The choice of impedance profiles to be applied can be planned off-line, or varied in real time based on feedback from the environmental interaction. Planning and control of variable impedance can use insight from human observations, from mathematical optimization methods, or from learning. In prosthetics, the possibility of adapting the stiffness to the interaction task has only been superficially tapped so far. This is due in part to the added complicacy of realizing and controlling stiffness independently of force. Some preliminary experiments however show that, under some conditions, variable stiffness can be a worthwhile feature to make prostheses more naturally embodied by users. In this talk I will review the basics of variable impedance, and discuss how this impact applications ranging from industrial and service robotics to prosthetics and rehabilitation.

Adriana Tapus is a Full Professor at ENSTA Paris, part of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and director of the Autonomous Systems and Robotics Lab. Adriana Tapus has an extensive academic background, including a PhD in Mobile Robotics from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and has held positions as a Full Professor and Associate Professor at various institutions in France and the United States. Since September 2019, she is the Director of the Doctoral School Institut Polytechnique of Paris (IP Paris), France 

Her research focuses on designing robotic systems with social abilities that exhibit personality and emotions through the use of verbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal communication, with the aim of improving the quality of life of vulnerable populations such as those with physical and cognitive impairments, those living alone and suffering from depression, and more. Furthermore, her research proposes the role of customized therapy, utilizing noninvasive and affordable sensing, tracking, and robotics technologies, to provide continuous monitoring, structure, guidance, reminders, motivation, and training to users for rehabilitation, physical therapy, and cognitive stimulation. 

Title:  Exploring the Unknown: Assistive Robotics Challenges in Long-Term Interaction, Personalization, and Trust

Christian Ott currently is Full Professor for robotics at Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria. He received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in mechatronics from the University of Linz, Austria, in 2001 and the Dr.-Ing. degree in control engineering from Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany, in 2005. From 2001 to 2007, he was working as a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Wessling, Germany. From 2007 to 2009, he was a Project Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechano-Informatics, University of Tokyo, Japan. He has been a team leader at DLR and led a Helmholtz Young Investigators Group for “Dynamic Control of Legged Humanoid Robots”. Then, he was head of the department for “Analysis and Control of Advanced Robotic Systems” at DLR. 

He has served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, was Co-Editor-in-Chief for IFAC Mechatronics, and is currently serving as Senior Editor for The International Journal of Robotics Research. He has been involved in several international conferences and was General Chair of Humanoids 2020 in Munich, Germany. In 2018 he received an ERC consolidator grant on energy efficient locomotion for elastic robots. He is IEEE Fellow since 2023. His current research interests include nonlinear robot control, elastic robots, whole-body control, impedance control, and control of humanoid robots. 

Title: Manipulation and locomotion with elastic robots

Abstract: In this talk I will present control algorithms for elastic robots with different types of elastic actuator concepts. For manipulation, I will present a passivity based control framework that allows to control the oscillatory nature of elastic robots and can render a desired compliant impedance behavior stably. This concept will be further extended towards applications, which require non-smooth contact transitions, such as stamping or hammering. Moreover, I will highlight how elastic actuators can be beneficial for dynamic locomotion with legged humanoid robots. I will first show some recent results on locomotion and whole-body-control with the torque controlled humanoid robot TORO. Then, I will present preliminary results of the project NatDyReL, which aims at achieving agile motions such as jumping and running with a new generation of elastic humanoids. Besides algorithms for generating stable running motions, I will also highlight the cyclic design process on the development of the hardware and the control.

Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich. He is also research professor in the CS faculty at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. He previously directed a lab as professor for machine learning and biomimetic robotics at the Technical University of Munich while leading the machine learning group at the research institute fortiss, and before founded and headed the Assistive Robotics and Bionics Lab at the DLR Oberpfaffenhofen. He is founding chairman of a non-for-profit organisation for Assistive Robotics for tetraplegics and co-founder of various tech companies. In 2018, he started a for-good initiative 10toGO by supporting teams using machine learning for the UN SDGs. 

His research focuses on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning. He has won a number of awards, including the 2013 Helmholtz-Association Erwin Schrödinger Award, the 2014 King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, the 2013 Harvard Medical School/MGH Martin Research Prize, the 2018 Webit Best Implementation of AI Award.  

Title:  Predict to control