SIRSLab

Today, the paper “MOOC on The Art of Grasping and Manipulation in Robotics: Design Choices and Lessons Learned”, by M. Pozzi, M. Malvezzi, and D. Prattichizzo, will be presented at RiE 2018, the 9th International Conference on Robotics in Education, Malta.

The MOOC is already available here.

Abstract of the paper. This paper presents guidelines for designing a MOOC on Advanced Robotics topics based on the authors’ experience in creating an on-line course on The Art of Grasping and Manipulation in Robotics. After a revision of the main MOOCs and video lectures about Robotics that are available on-line, we present our course and describe the preliminary feedback we gathered from a group of Master students.

Tomorrow we will run the Cross-Cutting Challenge on Expanding Sensory Motor Interactions organized by @Claudio Pacchierotti, @Leonardo Meli and myself in San Francisco at the IEEE Haptics Symposium 2018 #hapitcs2018 venue.

Recently, Elon Musk told an audience at the Dubai World Government Summit that “over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” In an age when AI and autonomy are becoming widespread, there is a growing need to empower human interactions through new intelligent devices. Nowadays, we have small wearable devices able to apply compelling haptic sensations as well as comfortable instrumented garments able to sense inputs coming from the human wearer (contact forces and motion). In the future, we foresee an advancement of these technologies toward more wearable and seamless solutions, until their complete blend and merge in what we call “wearable sensorimotor interfaces”. These novel interfaces will be able to sense user input and biometric information, and to apply haptic and other stimuli in an extremely seamless and comfortable way. This will be the first step toward a new field of research that can dramatically enlarge the potentiality and applicability of haptics to enhance human capabilities, health, and human interaction with digital information. Future applications may be in mixed and augmented reality, human sensory augmentation (e.g., extra limbs), assistance to elderly and disabled people, and natural control of intelligent devices (e.g., Internet of Things, smartphones).

The Cross-Cutting Challenge it is the first initiative of the haptics community and we are sure that our CCC will ispire and will get inspired by the interaction of the following renewed friends and colleagues:

Domenico Prattichizzo – University of Siena and Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Italy #sirslab
Hrvoje Benko – Oculus Research, USA
Vincent Hayward – University of London, UK, and Actronika SAS, France
Lucy Dunne – University of Minnesota, USA
Matteo Bianchi – University of Pisa, Italy
Akihito Noda – Nanzan University, Japan
Hong Z. Tan – Purdue University, USA
Simone Rossi – University of Siena, Italy
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker – Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany
Meg Grant – Seismic, Inc, USA
Allison M. Okamura – Stanford University, USA
Antonio Frisoli – TeCIP Institute, Italy
Leonardo Meli – University of Siena, Italy #sirslab
Claudio Pacchierotti – CNRS, France
Marcia O’Malley – Rice University, USA
Karon MacLean – University of British Columbia, Canada
Brad Holschuh – University of Minnesota, USA

#staytuned