IROS2021 Workshop "Dexterous manipulation in the real-contact context: new progress and challenges"

A full-day Workshop on

Dexterous manipulation in the real-contact context:

 new progress and challenges

Date:  27, September,2021               Time:   14:00 - 18:00 CEST

Motivation

The last 30 years have witnessed significant progress in designing and controlling dexterous robotic arms and hands. However, the use of these advanced robot technologies to accomplish skilful human-like tasks, especially in the real-world contexts, still presents many challenges. In addition to the main difficulties in developing robust and adaptive robots with desired design and engineering aspects, other challenging issues involve a lack of sufficient understanding of human dexterity and the representation and transfer of manipulation skills from human to robotic systems.

Many advanced new haptic devices have emerged that can interface with and measure the physical contact of human interactions with the environment. These devices provide us with the chance to understand and encode human dexterity, which bridges an important gap in the path to make robotic manipulation more intelligent. Paying particular attention to the imitation of human manipulation capabilities in robots, we propose a workshop to open the door to “dexterous intelligence”, where we summarize and discuss the latest findings in the key domains of neuroscience, mechatronics, machine learning and robotic control. Collectively these areas will contribute to future advances on this topic. Our intent is to take inspiration and learn from the broad base of researchers in this area who are addressing the following questions:

• How do humans use their arms and hands skillfully, e.g. for grasping, in-hand manipulation and tool usage?
• How can advanced mechatronic devices be used to capture human behaviour and skills?
• How can“skill patterns”be described and extracted from raw data obtained with these devices?
• How can the learned skill(s) be transferred to a real robot for the dexterous tasks?
• What are the challenging applications for dexterous robots in industrial and service domains?

Within this workshop, we will bring together experts from the different domains that inform progress in these areas, including haptic/tactile device developers focusing on contact pattern capturing and rendering, control scientists focusing on grasping/ planning, and computer scientists studying machine learning. Collectively, we will discuss the progress and challenges of dexterous manipulation to foster potential collaborations and reinforce links across those interdisciplinary research fields to promote progress in this community.

Topics of interest

• Wearable/haptic device R&D
• Tactile sensor R&D
• Haptic rendering
• Manipulation skills representation and learning
• Tactile perception
• Robotic adaptive and compliance control
• Physical human-robot interaction
• Teleoperation and telepresence
• Advanced dexterous manipulation applications

Invited Speakers

• Prof. Helge Wurdemann, University College London
• Prof. Nathan Lepora, University of Bristol
• Prof. Van A. Ho, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
• Prof. Oliver Kroemer, Carnegie Mellon University
• Prof. Jeannette Bohg, Stanford University
• Prof. Shuo Wang, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Prof.Kaspar Althoefer, Queen Mary University of London
• Prof. Huaping Liu, Tsinghua University
• Prof. Bernard BAYLE, University of Strasbourg 
• Prof. Helge Ritter, Bielefeld University

Organizer

• Dr. Qiang Li  (qli@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de)

Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) , Bielefeld University, Germany

• Dr. Chao Liu 

French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Monptellier, France 

• Prof. Chenguang Yang 

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England, UK

• Prof. Fei Chen 

T-Stone Robotics Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR | Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy.  

• Prof.Nathan Lepora 

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, UK

• Prof. Helge Ritter 

Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) , Bielefeld University,Germany

Endorsement

• IEEE TC on Robot learning
• IEEE TC on Haptics
• IEEE Tc on Collaborative Automation for Flexible Manufacturing TC

Special issue

• Complex & Intelligent Systems:

SI and submission Link:

https://www.springer.com/journal/40747/updates/18428724

•  Frontiers in Neurorobotics, Frontiers: 

SI and submission Link: 

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/21266/biological-inspired-autonomous-mobile-manipulation-challenges-in-design-control-and-real-world-appli?utm_source=F-RTM&utm_medium=TED1&utm_campaign=PRD_TED1_T1_RT-TITLE

• Industrial Robots, Emerald Publishing: 

SI and submission Link:  

https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/ir/intelligent-perception-interaction-and-learning-dexterous-robotic-manipulation

Supporting Projects:

• “DEXMAN” project (Project number: 410916101) funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German

Research Foundation)

• Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/S001913