Neuromorphic tactile coding to restore fine texture discrimination in upper limb amputees
Event details
| Date | 09.07.2014 |
| Hour | 11:30 › 12:30 |
| Speaker |
Dr. Calogero Oddo, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy. Bio: Dr. Calogero Maria Oddo (gender: male, date of birth: 10/05/1983) is Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, and head of the Human Machine Nexus Laboratory at The BioRobotics Institute, coordinating a team of 15 research fellows (10 males, 5 females). He is tutor of 3 PhD students in biorobotics, and he supervised 1 BSc Thesis and 4 MSc Theses on bioengineering topics. Under the mentoring of Prof. Maria Chiara Carrozza he obtained, all with honours: PhD in BioRobotics from SSSA (graduated in May 2011, admitted in January 2008 first in the ranking of candidates to the BioRobotics programme), MSc and BSc in Electronic Engineering from University of Pisa (in July 2007 and July 2005, respectively, first student graduating in the Master and Bachelor courses), 2nd and 1st level degrees in Industrial and Information Engineering from SSSA (admitted in September 2002 to a selective programme with 10 positions and 334 applicants, confirmed in 2005 as first in the ranking of SSSA engineering students). He attended courses, with maximum marks, on e-Business in the digital age at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. He was visiting PhD student at the Department of Physiology of University of Gothenburg. He has a growing track record in integrating biorobotics and neuroscience, and in this field he is authoring high-impact publications (Science Translational Medicine, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, PLOS One, Sensors and Actuators A). He has a H-index of 8 (source: Scholar). He has one PCT application (all claims accepted in the National phase) and one Italian patent application. At SSSA he holds courses for undergraduate (FPGA logics) and PhD (Neuromorphic engineering and tactile sensing) students, and he is scientific responsible of the BioRobotics section of the 2013 and 2014 editions of the second level master “Smart Solutions–Smart Communities” funded by Telecom Italia company (www.sssup.it/sssc). He gave invited lectures in leading Universities such as Lund University (Lund), Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris), Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (Trieste), Politecnico di Torino (Torino). He has a growing portfolio of successful research grants and he is WP leader within EU-FP7 (Nanobiotouch, Nebias) and National (HandBot PRIN, Intelligent Factory National Cluster, Parloma Smart Cities and Social Innovation call) projects. He is the recipient of the Working Capital grant with the SensAlone project, funded by Telecom Italia company (30 grants, 2133 applicants). So far, 31 years old, he had scientific responsibility over 1,023 M€ research funds secured after application to competitive calls. After the PhD graduation he served for two years as chief assistant, jointly with Dr. Nicola Vitiello, of the Coordinator – Prof. Paolo Dario – of the FET Flagship Candidate RoboCom, and in this quality he gained management skills and also represented the Coordinator in high-level meetings with EC Officers and with members of the other FET-F pilot actions. He regularly serves as a reviewer for international conferences in the field of bioengineering and biorobotics, and for 14 international scientific journals. He is review editor of Frontiers in Neurorobotics journal, he was program committee member of the 2013 and 2014 editions of the International Congress on Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics (NEUROTECHNIX), and of the Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) 2013 and 2014 conferences. He is member of the editorial board of the Automazione Integrata Italian industrial magazine. In 2006 he was awarded by the SSSA Alumni Association with the BioRobotics prize for his Bachelor thesis, in 2009 he was finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, and in 2012 he was finalist in the “Georges Giralt PhD Award”, the most important European PhD award in robotics, organized by EURON, the “EUropean RObotics research Network”. His research interests are in the bioengineering and biorobotics field, with a particular focus on the neuro-robotics area (http://sssa.bioroboticsinstitute.it/research/neurorobotics): specific research topics include cybernetic prostheses and biomechatronic systems, tactile sensing and artificial skin, human touch neurophysiology, neuromorphic engineering, safe human machine integration in the workplace. For research interests and personal sensibility he attentively follows the technological advancements in the field of renewable energies and green economy as well. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
A neuro-robotic approach has been systematically pursued during a long-term research strand at The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in order to endow a generation of robotic hand prostheses with an artificial sense of touch. Our ambition is the restoration of natural tactile sensation and perception in upper-limb amputees.
The lecture will introduce selected case-studies representing the milestones towards the targeted objective, requiring the exploration of an understanding-generation loop by means of a close integration between neuroscience and robotics. This pathway was predicated through three main research actions.
First, the development of tools enabling neuroscientific measurements and analyses on the human somatosensory system, such as mechatronic tactile stimulators suitable for electrophysiological recordings and for behavioural studies with psychophysical methods.
Second, the development of a biomimetic artificial touch technology that codes tactile information in a neuromorphic fashion, i.e. with sequences of spikes, and its integration in the distal phalanx of underactuated robotic hands, so to allow its experimental assessment under both passive-touch and active-touch motion control strategies and to evaluate neuroscientific hypotheses on the human somatosensory system.
Third, the porting of the developed artificial tactile sensing technology to the afferent pathways of the amputee.
The lecture will introduce selected case-studies representing the milestones towards the targeted objective, requiring the exploration of an understanding-generation loop by means of a close integration between neuroscience and robotics. This pathway was predicated through three main research actions.
First, the development of tools enabling neuroscientific measurements and analyses on the human somatosensory system, such as mechatronic tactile stimulators suitable for electrophysiological recordings and for behavioural studies with psychophysical methods.
Second, the development of a biomimetic artificial touch technology that codes tactile information in a neuromorphic fashion, i.e. with sequences of spikes, and its integration in the distal phalanx of underactuated robotic hands, so to allow its experimental assessment under both passive-touch and active-touch motion control strategies and to evaluate neuroscientific hypotheses on the human somatosensory system.
Third, the porting of the developed artificial tactile sensing technology to the afferent pathways of the amputee.
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof S. Micera
Contact
- Hein Anouk <[email protected]>