I-RIM 3D 2024 — Workshop
FRIDAY 25th @ 12.00-13.30
WS1: Marine Robotics Workshop
Organizers: Alessandro Ridolfi, David Scaradozzi, Gianluca Antonelli and Giovanni Indiveri
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 12.00-13.30. Hall 19.
Description: Over 70% of our planet’s surface is covered by water and over 96% of all Earth’s water is in the oceans. The oceans host a wealth of natural resources and play a key role in environmental and climate change processes. Robotics may provide fundamental tools for studying, understanding, and exploiting the marine environment. Marine Robotics is characterized by specific challenges related to the adverse and harsh physical conditions (underwater pressure, waves, tides, currents, winds, salinity, biofouling, etc.) as well as technological issues (unavailability of electromagnetic transmissions underwater, low bandwidth acoustic communications, complex power management policies, etc.). This Workshop aims to cover the wide range of scientific, industrial and application interests regarding marine robotics. The language will be technical, but not academic to make the contents enjoyable by a not necessarily highly specialized audience. The speakers will illustrate recent trends and technologies and will provide a glance of possible future developments.
WS2: Collaborative robotics for a natural and effective physical human-robot interaction
Organizers: Loris Roveda and Alessio Prini
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 12.00-13.30. Hall 20.
Description: The workshop aims to delve into the topic of collaborative robotics, with specific emphasis on natural and effective physical human-robot interaction. Such a topic, in fact, is extremely important in numerous contexts, such as industrial, assistive, and rehabilitation settings. Applications span co-transportation, co-assembly, collaborative mobile platforms, exoskeletons, etc. In these scenarios, the control of the human-robot interaction is important from many points of view. Safety is one of the highest priority KPIs: the human is in contact with the robot, and in some cases (e.g., exoskeletons) constrained to it. A natural interaction is also important to be established, to implement effective collaboration. Customized and adaptive controllers have also to be designed, so that a tailored robot behavior can be applied for each specific user.
WS3: Bridging the reality gap: can we trust upper-limb exoskeletons in clinical practice?
Organizers: Nicola Secciani, Chiara Brogi, Alberto Topini, Alessandro Ridolfi, Mihai Dragusanu, Danilo Troisi and Matteo Russo
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 12.00-13.30. Hall 21.
Description: Medical exoskeletons—wearable robotic devices that augment or replace lost limb functionalities—have captured significant interest in the field of Robotics for Medicine and Healthcare in recent years. Their potential for improving function and dexterity in individuals with neuromotor conditions (like stroke or spinal cord injury) is undeniable. However, despite this surge in innovation, they have not yet achieved widespread adoption within clinical practice: the use of upper limb exoskeletons, in particular, appears to be quite lagging behind. Several key challenges—such as technological limitations, cost, and integration into therapy—are impeding this transition. Addressing these challenges is crucial to unlocking the full potential of upper-limb exoskeletons, and cannot be done without a multidisciplinary co-design that involves engineers, clinicians, stakeholders and end-users. The purpose of this workshop, organized within the framework of the two PNRR/PNC research projects “THE” and “FIT4MEDROB”, is to analyze from such different perspectives how close or far upper-limb exoskeletons are to clinical practice presently, and to discuss what possible steps can be taken to bridge the reality gap in the near future.
FRIDAY 25th @ 17.30-19.00
WS4: Trends and challenges in collaborative robotics: perception, motion planning and control
Organizers: Lorenzo Scalera, Matteo Terreran and Enrico Villagrossi
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 17.30-19.00. Hall 19.
Description: Nowadays, the applications of human-robot collaboration are increasing in several manufacturing sectors, unlocking new robotic solutions and enabling the safe sharing of workspace between human operators and robots. Despite significant research efforts aimed at improving the reasoning, perception, planning, and control of robotic manipulators, reliability and effectiveness of solutions are still far from industrial requirements and research has to push further the state-of-the-art before a wide technological transfer to real production plants. This workshop aims to present trends and challenges in collaborative robotics, and to explore future prospects in this field, with particular focus on perception, task and motion planning, and control.
WS5: Robotics for neurorehabilitation: technological advances and clinical translation
Organizers: Nevio Luigi Tagliamonte and Stefano Mazzoleni
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 17.30-19.00. Hall 20.
Description: Robotic devices are becoming increasingly relevant in neurorehabilitation to support functional assessment and therapy. The design of such systems is extremely complex and also the effectiveness is still under continuous investigation in experimental trials. Design and actual translation into clinical applications are highly interwoven and together pose several open challenges. This workshop aims at soliciting a discussion on recent technological designs and steps towards clinical translation, i.e. at merging bioengineering, robotics and clinical perspectives on key aspects to be addressed for rehabilitation robotic technologies and their effective application in the research context of experimental trials and in the clinical daily practice.
WS6: Rehabilitative and Assistive Robotics Research in Italy: The Fit4Medical Robotics Initiative
Organizers: Laura Fiorini, Maura Casadio and Andrea Orlandini
Date and Location: Friday 25th October 2024, 17.30-19.00. Hall 21.
Description: Rehabilitative and assistive robots primarily aim to provide personal assistance with daily tasks and offer rehabilitative or pre-habilitation treatments to individuals at risk of frailty. Their main long-term goal is to enhance the quality of life and the quality of care perceived by citizens. In recent years, research has been conducted in the fields of biomedical engineering, mechanics, control, materials, ethics, and law, as well as involving clinical and business experts, to provide evidence in the areas of rehabilitative robotics, assistive robotics, and clinical assessment. In this context, this workshop aims to foster discussion among robotics’ developers, clinical experimenters and experts in the field of ethics and impact assessment starting from the experience of the Fit4Medical Robotics project.
SATURDAY 26th @ 17.30-19.00
WS7: Bringing Robotics in Ph.D. Summer Schools – Offer and approaches
Organizers: Nicola Pedrocchi, Elena De Momi, Calogero Oddo, Francesca Cordella, Andrea Zanchettin, Matteo Matteucci, Matteo Bianchi, Alberto Parmiggiani, Andrea Orlandini, Fanny Ficuciello, Gionata Salvietti, Gastone Ciuti and Gabriele Costante
Date and Location: Saturday 26th October 2024, 17.30-19.00. Hall 20
Description: As a discipline, Robotics is an exciting and inherently interdisciplinary field that seamlessly blends various aspects of engineering and computer science. This fusion is crucial for designing and deploying cutting-edge integrated systems and solutions. Students from diverse backgrounds have a fantastic opportunity to attend national and international PhD summer/winter schools, which offer top-tier robotics and Intelligent Machines courses every year. The workshop strives to be an opportunity for organizers of various summer/winter schools in robotics and intelligent machines to come together, share their experiences, and showcase their unique educational approaches. For PhD students, instead, this workshop is a gateway to explore diverse didactic initiatives and grasp the underlying principles of different educational programs. The workshop will also provide a platform to analyse the profiles of Italian and international PhD candidates and evaluate the success of various initiatives.
WS8: Traditional Computer Vision in the Deep Learning Era
Organizers: Matteo Matteucci and Gabriele Costante
Date and Location: Saturday 26th October 2024, 17.30-19.00. Hall 21
Description: The ability to extract information from images is a cornerstone in the development of intelligent robotic solutions. Over the past 50 years, we have witnessed a shift from traditional geometric computer vision to deep learning-based approaches. Recently, this transition has accelerated rapidly towards AI-based methods, raising the question of whether there is still room in industry and research for non-data-driven approaches. This workshop aims to bring together experts from both traditional computer vision and deep learning fields to discuss this question. Specifically, deep learning and traditional computer vision experts will be invited to present cutting-edge AI-based solutions and applications, as well as to highlight how traditional computer vision can still make a significant impact in specific domains.
