Objectives

Haptics, or the sense of touch, enables humans to interact with their environment and is crucial to manipulation challenges in everyday life. It enables grasping, manipulation, learning, and decision-making based on the information from mechanoreceptors distributed in muscles and over the skin. Humans use haptic exploration to interact with their environment, e.g. to recognise an object's shape and mechanical properties. 

Thus, this year’s workshop theme is on Visuo-Tactile Perception, Learning, Control for Manipulation and HRI Emerging Data Driven Approach.

Topics of interest (but not limited to)

Human Sense of Touch  

• Touch physiology from skin to brain
• Haptic Perception 
• Action and Perception Loop
• Perception for Learning

Tactile Sensing Technologies

• Conformable and compliant materials
• Features enabled by conformable sensors.
• Biomimetics
• Sensor effects
• Integration and read-out strategies
• Self-healing properties and strategies
• Sensor skins: design, fabrication, and integration strategies
• Integration strategies for sensors in robotics
• Enabling technologies for fully integrated robotic systems

Visuo-Tactile Perception, Human-Robot Interaction, Exploration

• Exploitation of contact constraints
• Novel contact models
• Object perception for the exploitation of contact
• Tactile information processing
• Tactile feature extraction / feature learning 
• Tactile-based object modelling 
• Tactile object localization
• Tactile shape reconstruction and recognition
• Tactile object classification
• Tactile exploration
• Trends in combining of vision and touch sensing.
• Roles of vision and touch sensing in different object perception tasks
• Modelling and representation of sensing modalities
• Integration of visuo-tactile sensing modalities

Visuo-Tactile Grasp, Prehensile and Non-prehensile Manipulation

• Linear/rotational slip detection 
• Grasping planning
• Grasp stability assessment.
• Soft manipulation
• In-hand/whole body manipulation
• Tactile planning interplay between touch sensing and vision
• Tactile knowledge/skill transfer  
• Tactile transfer learning
• The meaning and function of different sensing modalities in object manipulation
• Sensing and planning in object manipulation
• Multi-robot manipulation and coordination
• Control strategy for object manipulation and collaborative assembly
• Learning object manipulation skills from human demonstration
• Novel approaches to grasp and manipulation planning
• Whole-body, multi-contact planning and control
• Design and characterization of contact-exploiting, compliant hands

Invited Speakers   

Human Sense of Touch 

• Prof. Allison Okamura (Stanford University, USA)
• Prof. Henrik Jörntel (Lund University, Sweden)
• Prof. Yasemin Vardar (TU-Delft, the Netherlands)

Tactile Sensing Technologies

• Prof. Benjamin Tee (National University of Singapore)
• Prof. Carmel Majidi (Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, USA)

Visuo-Tactile Perception, Human-Robot Interaction, Exploration, & Learning

• Prof. Hauping Liu (Tsinghua University, China), Confirmed
• Prof. Kaspar Althoefer (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
• Dr. Lorenzo Natale (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT, Italy)
• Prof. Gregory Gerling (University of Virginia)

Visuo-Tactile Grasp, Prehensile and Non-Prehensile Manipulation

• Prof. Animesh Garg (University of Toronto, Canada)
• Prof. Matei Ciocarlie (Columbia University, USA)
• Prof. Oliver Kroemer (Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, USA)
• Prof. Nima Fazeli (University of Michigan, USA)
• Prof. Alberto Rodriguez (MIT, USA)

Organizers

• Mohsen Kaboli, Assistant Professor and Head of RoboTac Lab BMW Group and Donders Institute for Brain and Cognition, Radboud University , the Netherlands  Email: mohsen.kaboli@bmwgroup.com, 
• Etienne Burdet, Professor. Chair of Human Robotics, Interface labs, Imperial College London
• Vincent Hayward, Professor, Sorbonne Université / Actronika SAS, France
• Henrik Jörntell, Professor Neural Basis of Sensorimotor Control, Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University
•  Anirvan Dutta, PhD Candidate, BMW Group BMW Group and Imperial College London