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SUMMARY:Soft and flexible sensing approaches for providing tactile cues in
  biorobotics
DTSTART:20140324T150000
DTSTAMP:20260510T022812Z
UID:6b5c22c4d6451258848f78d1104dfac3e4eb04619d491b692789259d
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Lucia Beccai\,Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia\nThe emulati
 on of natural touch requires tactile sensors that mechanically comply with
  the environment – in order to gain relevant information from physical i
 nteractions – and that\, at the same time\, are able to perform when smo
 othly adapted to host three-dimensional structures. However\, to shape def
 ormable materials while developing high precision\, yet robust\, systems i
 s complex\, and it reveals interesting scientific questions. In addressing
  artificial touch investigation\, in our group\, soft skin-like tactile se
 nsors are pursued by designing devices using materials with features like 
 flexibility and compliance\, but also robustness\, and with low cost proce
 sses. In particular we aim at developing tactile systems for a robotic roo
 t. When a plant root comes into contact with obstacles to its growth\, it 
 adopts efficient strategies to circumnavigate the barriers and to direct i
 ts growth towards low impedance pathways. The root apex senses the mechani
 cal impedance related to constraints provided by the soil or soil compacti
 on. In a robotic implementation\, the artificial root apex must be equippe
 d with a sensing system able to detect barriers to growth and to discrimin
 ate between different mechanical impedances of the soil\, and I will show 
 how soft tactile sensing can be a suitable technological approach.\nWe als
 o aim at merging biomimetic mechanical characteristics with an advanced se
 nsing functionality that goes beyond contact and pressure detection. In th
 is context I will describe investigation on a highly sensitive tactile sen
 sor that can detect both normal and shear forces. The technological approa
 ch is based on capacitive transduction and it combines soft elastomers and
  conductive textiles.\nFinally\, I will also introduce how a new concept i
 s created by introducing soft materials in known sensing strategies\, like
  the transmission of optical signals in a waveguide that is not rigid but 
 is a soft and transparent elastomeric substrate. I will show the potential
 ity of this approach for the future development of artificial skins that c
 an provide different tactile cues - like pressure distribution and shape o
 f contact - as well as perform with multiple tactile stimuli.\nBio: Lucia 
 Beccai from Nov. 2009 is a Team Leader researcher at the Center for Micro-
 BioRobotics of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT)\, in Pontedera (P
 isa)\, Italy. Dr. Beccai obtained her Ph.D. in Microsystem Engineering fro
 m the University of Rome Tor Vergata in 2003. Dr. Beccai has matured exper
 tise in biorobotics and microsystem engineering. Some specific fields in w
 hich she addressed and led investigations are related to biomedical micros
 ystems for in-vivo applications\, MEMS\, bionic hand tactile feedback syst
 ems\, the understanding of human tactile encoding mechanisms and the devel
 opment of artificial systems that can mimic touch. She was project manager
  of Cyberhand (EU-IST-FET-2001-35094) and Nanobiotact (FP6-NMP-033287).
LOCATION:DIA003 http://plan.epfl.ch/?room=DIA003
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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