Active Tactile Sensing in Robotics – Emerging Technologies and Methods for Smart Skin Designs

• Prof. Hedan Bai is a Professor at the Department of Materials of ETH Zürich. She also leads the Robotic Materials group, an interdisciplinary team of researchers involved in developing soft materials, with a focus on unusual form and unconventional functions for broader robotic possibilities. At the workshop, she will give a talk on smart sensing skin for robotics.
• Prof. Henrik Jörntell is a Professor of neurophysiology at Lund University, Sweden. He is also the Coordinator of the FETOpen Project ph-coding, in which the fundamental brain mechanisms of haptic perception and their implementation in technological solutions are investigated.  At the workshop, he will speak about the importance of skin tissue dynamics in biologically active tactile sensing and its advantages in robotics and artificial intelligence.  

• Prof. Virgilio Mattoli was a Professor at the University of Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, and is now with the Center of Materials Interfaces in the Italian Institute of Technology. His main research interests include: smart nano- and bio-inspired materials, micro/nano-fabrication, soft/tattoo electronics, sensors, and biorobotics. At the workshop, he will give a talk on the possible application in soft and biomedical robotics of ultra-thin soft electronics based on free-standing polymeric films, offering conformal adhesion on diverse surfaces.

• Prof. Alexander Schmitz is a Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and the CEO of XELA Robotics, a company specialised in tactile sensing technology and its integration into various robot hands and grippers. At the workshop, he will give a talk on the various technologies for tactile sensing in robotic manipulation, and provide a live demonstration of XELA Robotics products and their measured data, showcasing robot hands and grippers equipped with their finger sensor technology, performing grasping and measurements of various objects. 
• Prof. Yanmin Zhou is a Professor at the Department of Control Science and Engineering in Tongji University. Her research interest includes bionics, active tactile sensing, and human-robot interaction. The specific topic of her talk at the workshop is still to be defined.
• Prof. Robert Haschke is a Professor at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His research focuses on cognitive bimanual robotics, grasping and manipulation with multi-fingered dexterous hands, tactile sensing, neural networks and software integration. At the Workshop, he will give a talk about tactile-based active grasping in robotics.

Additionally,

• Prof. Calogero Oddo from Sant’Anna University will bring a demonstrator consisting of a forearm-shaped e-skin equipped with fibre Bragg grating sensors. The sensors’ arrangement and receptive fields are intended to morphologically mimic type II mechanoreceptors of the human skin.
• Nadezhda Varzonova from the University of Klagenfurt will provide a live demo of a custom gripper attachment and soft finger, able to recognize material properties and type of textile.
• Dr. Tutku Bedük from Silicon Austria Lab (SAL) will demonstrate the SOLES array, an array of flexible, printed force sensors, able to provide data reliable enough for complex tasks such as gait analysis. Due to additive manufacturing, the array can be employed on and adapted to differently shaped surfaces.
• Prof. Yanmin Zhou from Tongji University will demonstrate her developed Dynamic Tactile Sensor (DTS) and will present a wearable soft skin patch enhanced by multimodal sensing capabilities for humanoid robots.