In continuation to this series of CYBATHLON 2020 winners, today we feature the victory of the HSR Enhanced team from the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST). In addition, we interviewed their team leader of this year, Christian Bermes.

In this race, pilots with a severe walking disability from seven teams competed against each other in a motorized wheelchair. As the organizers of CYBATHLON describe, “motorized wheelchairs can make everyday life much easier for people with a walking disability. The important thing is that they can overcome obstacles such as ramps and yet are not too large to drive under a normal table. Motorized wheelchairs that are controlled by joystick, tongue control, touchpad or other technologies are eligible for this race and are characterized by innovative approaches to overcome obstacles such as stairs”. The challenge for the pilots was to complete the following tasks:

(1) Driving up to a table until half of the thighs were covered without displacing the table to test the size and seat height of the wheelchair.

(2) Driving through furniture without displacing it to test the size of the wheelchair and precise maneuverability.

(3) Crossing uneven terrain to test the grip of the wheels, ground clearance and power.

(4) Ascending and descending stairs, and bringing the wheelchair to a standstill while descending to test the ability to climb and descend stairs in a controlled manner, and power.

(5) Driving across tilted path with different surfaces to test the drifting and tipping stability, and power.

(6) Driving a ramp up and down, opening and closing the door in the middle using an externally powered technical support (e.g. a robotic arm) to test precise maneuverability and control of technical support in a confined space.

This year, team HSR Enhanced with pilot Florian Hauser was unbeatable again, as it happened in the 2016 edition. The silver medal went to team Caterwil from Russia with pilot Iurii Larin. The third finalist was team Fortississimo from Japan with pilot Hiroshi Nojima. Here’s a summary of the races of the top 4 finalists (from time 1:01:49):

You can see the results from the rest of the teams in this discipline here, or watch the recorded livestreams of both days on their website.

Interview to Christian Bermes – (ex) Team leader of HSR Enhanced team

We had the pleasure to interview Christian Bermes, team leader of the HSR Enhanced team in both 2016 and 2020 editions. After CYBATHLON 2020, he handed over the team leads, as he moved from OST to be Professor for Mobile Robotics at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons.

D. C. Z.: What does it mean for your team to have won in your CYBATHLON category?

C.B.: It is a huge confirmation that our first win in 2016 was not just a coïncidence, but again the result of human-centered innovation together with our pilot Florian Hauser, meticulous engineering, proper prior planning, hard training and of course a next-level pilot performance. Needless to say that there was a certain amount of luck involved, too – and hard work puts you where luck finds you.

D. C. Z.: And what does it mean for people with disabilities?

C.B.: I find it hard to answer this in general terms. Our wheelchair as it is right now will not enter a mass market, however some of its modules could, if we found partners for industrialization. I just think it’s great that people with disabilities are the figureheads and heroes of CYBATHLON. They have prepared themselves in the most professional way, have unmatched control over their machines and are simply impressive.

D. C. Z.: What are still your challenges?

C.B.: Right now we enjoy the weightlessness of the win. Soon after, CYBATHLON will publish the new race obstaces for 2024 and I am 100% sure that there will be many technical challenges right away. Moreover, budget has to be secured, sponsors must be found, the team must be sworn in, plus many things more. The goal for 2024 is clear – win another title. I have full confidence in the new lead crew and their team, they will outperform everything we have seen from HSR enhanced until this day. And with Florian Hauser as pilot, we will see lightning speed on the race day.

The story of pilot Florian Hauser

The organizers released a series of videos telling the personal story of some of the competing pilots. The pilot of the HSR Enhanced team, Florian Hauser, “is a tetraplegic since he had a motorcycle accident in 2014. However, this does not prevent him from riding fast. Not on a bike anymore, but in his wheelchair,” as the organizers describe. Apart from being the winner of his discipline in this 2020 edition, Florian also won CYBATHLON 2016 and the CYBATHLON wheelchair Series in Japan.

Introducing the second of our new series of Women in Robotics Updates, featuring Maja Mataric and Arianna Menciassi from our first “25 women in robotics you need to know about” list in 2013. Since we started Women in Robotics has focused on positive role models in robotics, highlighting women’s career work, but we’d like to point out just how much energy that these amazing women extend to outreach, to inspiring and supporting their junior colleagues and to science management, supporting and advancing the increasingly complex machinery of research.

For example, Ariana Menciasi has held many editorial and technical committee roles, and manages both European and extra-European research projects, which involves extensive collaboration efforts. And Maja Mataric started the US Women in Robotics Research Database, which inspired similar initiatives in Canada, with the goal that you should always be able to find a female robotics researcher for interviews, positions, panels and conferences.

Maja Mataric Interim Vice President at University of Southern California | Founder of Embodied Inc Maja Matarić (featured 2013) is now Interim Vice President of Research at the University of Southern California (USC) and the founding director of the USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems. She is a pioneer of socially assistive robotics (SAR) which focuses on developing robots that provide therapies and care through social interaction, especially for special-needs populations; her Interaction’s Lab has worked with children with autism, stroke patients, elderly users with Alzheimer’s, and many others. Matarić received the Distinguished Professor award at USC in 2019. She became a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 2017 and in 2015 she was listed in Top 100 Inspiring Women in STEM by Insight into Diversity. Matarić was also a recipient of the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award in Innovation in 2013 and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) in 2011. She has more than 650 publications and 39000 citations and is very passionate about mentoring and empowering students and communicating the excitement of interdisciplinary research and careers in STEM to a diverse audience including K-12 students and teachers, women, and other underrepresented groups in engineering. In 2016, Matarić founded Embodied Inc, which in 2020 launched Moxie, a socially assistive robot for child development that provides “play-based learning that is paced to weekly themes and missions with content designed to promote social, emotional, and cognitive learning”. As Liz Ohanion at KCET said, “Maja Mataric is a robotics powerhouse and, when she’s not inspiring the next generation of engineers, she’s working on a series of robots that could very well change the lives of the people who use them.”

Arianna Menciassi Full professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Arianna Menciassi (featured in 2013) is now a full professor in Biomedical Engineering at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA). She is also a team leader of the “Surgical Robotics & Allied Technologies” Area at The BioRobotics Institute in SSSA where she has been advancing intelligent devices that permit medical or surgical procedures to be performed in a minimally invasive regime, and in an increasingly reliable, reproducible and safe way. As Menciassi says in her interview at Autonomous Robotic Surgery : “I am looking for solutions for giving the best care to the patients not only using scissor and knife but also using energy for example ultra sounds, focused ultra sounds, when you take a pill this is sort of autonomous treatment, this is not an autonomous robot but it is an autonomous treatment.” Menciassi has received The Women Innovation Award, for female scientists in biomedical robotics, by WomenTech in 2017. Her SupCam project was awarded as Special Electronic Design with the Compasso d’Oro, ADI Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (Golden compass, Association for Industrial Design) in 2016 for her cost-effective and minimally invasive endoscopic device. Also, the FUTURA project, a novel robotic platform for Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) in clinics, which was coordinated by Menciassi was awarded the Technology Award for the Society of Medical and Innovation Technology (SMIT) in 2015. In an already prolific career, Menciassi has more than 19000 citations, 650 publications, 7 book chapters and almost 50 patents in her name and has been constantly improving the fields of surgical and biomedical robotics. Her vision for the future is strong, “Maybe in 30 years all drugs will be more robotic and let’s say autonomous because they will be able to reach some specific areas of the human body to treat cells or to treat a disease.”

Want to keep reading? There are 180 more stories on our 2013 to 2020 lists. Why not nominate someone for inclusion next year!

And we encourage #womeninrobotics and women who’d like to work in robotics to join our professional network at http://womeninrobotics.org

The last edition of CYBATHLON took place on 13-14 November, 2020. This competition, created by ETH Zurich and run as a non-profit project, aims to advance in the research and development of assistive technology by involving developers, people with disabilities, and the general public. We had the chance to interview the winning team of the powered exoskeleton race, Angel Robotics from South Korea.

In this race, pilots with complete thoracic or lumbar spinal cord injury from nine teams competed using an exoskeleton. This wearable, powered support enables them to walk and master other everyday tasks. Indeed, the motivation behind this race is that “the use of exoskeletons is still rare, they are currently mainly used for physiotherapy in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Exoskeletons dramatically increase the mobility of people with paraplegia, which consequently improves their overall physical and psychological health and therefore might represent a welcome addition to a wheelchair”, as the organizers of CYBATHLON state. This race involved:

(1) Sitting down & standing up from a sofa, and stacking cups while standing next to a table to test the range of motion and strength in the knee and hip joints, and stability.

(2) Slaloming around furniture without displacing it to test precision of steps and agility.

(3) Crossing uneven terrain to test precision of steps and adaptation of step lengths and widths.

(4) Climbing and descending stairs to test range of motion and strength in the knee and hip joints, and step precision.

(5) Walking across a tilted path to test the lateral range of motion in hip and foot joints, and stability.

(6) Climbing a ramp, opening and closing the door in the middle of the ramp, and descending the ramp to test the range of motion in foot, knee and hip joints, stability and maneuvering in confined spaces.

The top three teams were the company Angel Robotics (1) from South Korea with pilot Byeong-Uk Kim, TWIICE from EPFL research group REHAssist with pilot Silke Pan, and Angel Robotics (2) with pilot Lee Joo-Hyun. Remarkably, the three of them achieved the highest score – 100 points. With this impressive result, the podium was decided based on finishing time. If you can’t wait to watch how tight the races were, you can enjoy them in the recorded livestream below (from time 3:10:30).

You can see the results from the rest of the teams in this discipline here, or watch the recoreded livestreams of both days on their website.

Interview to Kyoungchul Kong – Team leader of Angel Robotics team

We had the pleasure to interview Kyungchul Kong, team leader and CEO of Angel Robotics (1&2). He is also an Associate Professor of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).

D. C. Z.: What does it mean for your team to have won in your CYBATHLON category?

K.K.: In WalkON Suit, the powered exoskeleton of Angel Robotics, there have been various dramatic technical advances. Since the first Cybathlon in 2016, the walking speed has become as fast as people without disabilities. The most important feature of WalkON Suit is its balance; as the center of mass is placed on the area of feet while standing straight, the wearer can stand without much effort for a long time. These superior functionalities of WalkON Suit could be proved by winning the Gold and Bronze medals at Cybathlon 2020.

D. C. Z.: And what does it mean for people with disabilities?

K.K.: While winning the Gold medal is glorious, winning two medals is especially meaningful. The physical conditions of the two pilots (i.e., the Gold medalist and the Bronze medalist) of Team Angel Robotics were extremely different. One was a male with very strong upper body, while the other was a female with much less muscles. Such different people could be successfully assisted by WalkON Suit, which means that the powered exoskeleton is not a technology optimized for a single user, but able to be utilized by many people with different body conditions.

D. C. Z.: What are still your challenges?

K.K.: In order to bring the WalkON Suit into the real life of people who need this technology, it has to be much improved in terms of wearability, price, and weight. The user should be able to wear the robot without anyone else’s help. It should be light enough to handle while sitting on a wheelchair. The price is another critical issue considering practical conditions. With these restrictions, the functionalities and performance of the robot must not be deteriorated. These are the challenges we are much trying to get over.

When danger approaches, the Moroccan flic-flac spider takes the shape of a ball and rolls away to safety. Just as the trick of shape-shifting to one's environment has proved invaluable for many creatures, Yale researchers say it could be equally useful for robots.

A pair of researchers at Konkuk University has designed a miniaturized micro air vehicle (MAV) capable of recovering from midair collisions. In their paper published in the journal Science, Hoang Vu Phan and Hoon Cheol Park describe their study of collision recovery in rhinoceros beetles and how they applied their findings to the design of a new kind of MAV.

Over the past decade or so, roboticists and computer scientists have tried to use reinforcement learning (RL) approaches to train robots to efficiently navigate their environment and complete a variety of basic tasks. Building affordable robots that can support and manage the exploratory controls associated with RL algorithms, however, has so far proved to be fairly challenging.

Coval's CVGM series mini vacuum chamber is designed to handle light and porous objects, such as protective masks, but also fabric or leather cut-outs.

The Shadow Robot Dexterous Hand is a robot hand, with size, shape and movement capabilities similar to those of a human hand. To give the robotic hand the ability to learn how to manipulate objects researchers from WMG, University of Warwick, have developed new AI algorithms.

Sometimes you need to get human knowledge and skills to places that are hazardous or difficult to access for people. The project entitled Predictive Avatar Control and Feedback (PACOF) is creating a robotic system that allows the robot operator to experience the location just as the robot does. Three researchers representing the three different disciplines of the University of Twente's EEMCS faculty are working together in this project.

The success of machine vision in industrial manufacturing is due to the fact that it provides faster, more accurate and more cost-effective QA than manual visual inspection.

What would the world look like if socially skilled robots stepped into the roles normally reserved for humans?

Learn how to containerize a deep learning model using Docker. Start with the basic concepts behind containers, package a Tensorflow application with Docker and combine multiple images using Docker compose

What will the factory of the future be like? How will it be organized? To answer these and many other questions about the Industry 4.0 production model, all it takes is a trip to the FPT Industrial Driveline plant in Turin.

By Leah Burrows / SEAS communications

Newly engineered slinky-like strain sensors for textiles and soft robotic systems survive the washing machine, cars and hammers.

Think about your favorite t-shirt, the one you’ve worn a hundred times, and all the abuse you’ve put it through. You’ve washed it more times than you can remember, spilled on it, stretched it, crumbled it up, maybe even singed it leaning over the stove once. We put our clothes through a lot and if the smart textiles of the future are going to survive all that we throw at them, their components are going to need to be resilient.

Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed an ultra-sensitive, seriously resilient strain sensor that can be embedded in textiles and soft robotic systems. The research is published in Nature.

“Current soft strain gauges are really sensitive but also really fragile,” said Oluwaseun Araromi, Ph.D., a Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at SEAS and the Wyss Institute and first author of the paper. “The problem is that we’re working in an oxymoronic paradigm — highly sensitivity sensors are usually very fragile and very strong sensors aren’t usually very sensitive. So, we needed to find mechanisms that could give us enough of each property.”

In the end, the researchers created a design that looks and behaves very much like a Slinky.

“A Slinky is a solid cylinder of rigid metal but if you pattern it into this spiral shape, it becomes stretchable,” said Araromi. “That is essentially what we did here. We started with a rigid bulk material, in this case carbon fiber, and patterned it in such a way that the material becomes stretchable.”

The pattern is known as a serpentine meander, because its sharp ups and downs resemble the slithering of a snake. The patterned conductive carbon fibers are then sandwiched between two pre-strained elastic substrates. The overall electrical conductivity of the sensor changes as the edges of the patterned carbon fiber come out of contact with each other, similar to the way the individual spirals of a slinky come out of contact with each other when you pull both ends. This process happens even with small amounts of strain, which is the key to the sensor’s high sensitivity.

Unlike current highly sensitive stretchable sensors, which rely on exotic materials such as silicon or gold nanowires, this sensor doesn’t require special manufacturing techniques or even a clean room. It could be made using any conductive material.

The researchers tested the resiliency of the sensor by stabbing it with a scalpel, hitting it with a hammer, running it over with a car, and throwing it in a washing machine ten times. The sensor emerged from each test unscathed. To demonstrate its sensitivity, the researchers embedded the sensor in a fabric arm sleeve and asked a participant to make different gestures with their hand, including a fist, open palm, and pinching motion. The sensors detected the small changes in the subject’s forearm muscle through the fabric and a machine learning algorithm was able to successfully classify these gestures.

“These features of resilience and the mechanical robustness put this sensor in a whole new camp,” said Araromi.

Such a sleeve could be used in everything from virtual reality simulations and sportswear to clinical diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s Disease. Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed to protect the intellectual property associated with this project.

“The combination of high sensitivity and resilience are clear benefits of this type of sensor,” said senior author Robert Wood, Ph.D., Associate Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, and the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS. “But another aspect that differentiates this technology is the low cost of the constituent materials and assembly methods. This will hopefully reduce the barriers to get this technology widespread in smart textiles and beyond.”

“We are currently exploring how this sensor can be integrated into apparel due to the intimate interface to the human body it provides,” says co-author and Wyss Associate Faculty member Conor Walsh, Ph.D., who also is the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS. “This will enable exciting new applications by being able to make biomechanical and physiological measurements throughout a person’s day, not possible with current approaches.”

The combination of high sensitivity and resilience are clear benefits of this type of sensor. But another aspect that differentiates this technology is the low cost of the constituent materials and assembly methods. This will hopefully reduce the barriers to get this technology widespread in smart textiles and beyond.

Robert Wood

The research was co-authored by Moritz A. Graule, Kristen L. Dorsey, Sam Castellanos, Jonathan R. Foster, Wen-Hao Hsu, Arthur E. Passy, James C. Weaver, Senior Staff Scientist at SEAS and Joost J. Vlassak, the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Materials Engineering at SEAS. It was funded through the university’s strategic research alliance with Tata. The 6-year, $8.4M alliance was established in 2016 to advance Harvard innovation in fields including robotics, wearable technologies, and the internet of things (IoT).

• PUBLICATION – Ultra-sensitive and resilient compliant strain gauges for soft machines. Oluwaseun A. Araromi, Moritz A. Graule, Kristen L. Dorsey, Sam Castellanos, Jonathan R. Foster, Wen-Hao Hsu, Arthur E. Passy, Joost J. Vlassak, James C. Weaver, Conor J. Walsh and Robert J. Wood. Nature, vol. 587, pp. 219-224 (2020)

In this episode, our interviewer Lauren Klein speaks with Kim Baraka about his PhD research to enable robots to engage in social interactions, including interactions with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Baraka discusses how robots can plan their actions across multiple modalities when interacting with humans, and how models from psychology can inform this process. He also tells us about his passion for dance, and how dance may serve as a testbed for embodied intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction.

Kim Baraka

Kim Baraka is a postdoctoral researcher in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and an upcoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he will be part of the Social Artificial Intelligence Group. Baraka recently graduated with a dual PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, and the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, Portugal. At CMU, Baraka was part of the Robotics Institute and was advised by Prof. Manuela Veloso. At IST, he was part of the Group on AI for People and Society (GAIPS), and was advised by Prof. Francisco Melo.

Dr. Baraka’s research focuses on computational methods that inform artificial intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction. He develops approaches for knowledge transfer between humans and robots in order to support mutual and beneficial relationships between the robot and human. Specifically, he has conducted research in assistive interactions where the robot or human helps their partner to achieve a goal, and in teaching interactions. Baraka is also a contemporary dancer, with an interest in leveraging lessons from dance to inform advances in robotics, or vice versa.

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PS. If you enjoy listening to experts in robotics and asking them questions, we recommend that you check out Talking Robotics. They have a virtual seminar on Dec 11 where they will be discussing how to conduct remote research for Human-Robot Interaction; something that is very relevant to researchers working from home due to COVID-19.