The next Conference on Intelligent Machines and Robots (I-RIM 3D 2022) will be in Rome from the 7th to the 9th of October 2022 at Istituto Superiore Antincendi (ISA) co-located with the Maker Faire European Edition. I-RIM 3D will host some workshops and Andrea Orlandini is one of the organizers of the Workshop on Applications and Challenges for Assistive Robotics that will be held on the 8th of October from 9am to 12pm.
The workshop. Assistive robots usually perform social or physical assistive tasks for increasing the well-being of a person with special needs like, e.g., a (temporary/permanent) physical or cognitive disability, a chronical (age-related) health condition or some specific illness. Usually, an assistive task is embedded in the context of normal human activities of daily living (ADLs) and robots can perform it that otherwise has to be performed by an attendant/caregiver. The user with special needs (and also a caregiver) interacts and controls the functioning of the robot.
The recent advances in technology fostered the development of many robotic solutions capable of implementing many assistive tasks addressing a variety of needs while fulfilling safety and caring requirements. At the same time, assistive scenarios are requiring robots to realize complex and often very specialized skills, to work in highly sensorized environments, to exhibit advanced cognitive and autonomy functions, understand human factors and personalize their behaviors to different users and contexts. In this area, research is still at an early stage and many possible developments are going to happen.
This workshop is proposed by the I-RIM working group on Assistive Robotics and it is aimed at providing a forum where researchers and practitioners from the Italian assistive robotics community can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges. The co-location with the Maker Faire offers a further opportunity to show the outstanding results and disseminate the activities performed by universities, research centers and companies. This is also an opportunity to connect people coming from different research fields and foster the creation of new possible synergies leading to scientific collaborations, new project proposals, cultural exchanges, etc.
The program and the speakers. A series of talks will be provided by several Italian researchers in assistive robotics aiming at providing an overview of applications and current results as well as poiting out challenges and barriers to their deployment. The workshop will be closed with a discussion panel to summarize the points presented in the talks.
The speakers are:
- Laura Giarrè (UniMORE)
- AndreA Orlandini (National Research Council of Italy),
- Mariacarla Staffa (Naples University Parthenope)
- Antonio Sgorbissa (Genoa University)
- Silvia Rossi (Naples University Federico II)
- Stefano Tortora (UniPadua)
- Laura Fiorini (Florence University)
Room: ISA – Room 20 / 09:00-12:00 (10:20 – 10:40 coffee break)
| 09:00 | 09:05 | Introduction | |
| 09:05 | 09:20 | Laura Giarrè - Accessibility and Independent Navigation for Visually Impaired People | |
| 09:20 | 09:35 | AndreA Orlandini - Deploying AI for healthcare & Active Aging. Experiences, lessons learned and open challenges | |
| 09:35 | 09:50 | Antonio Sgorbissa - "Words are all around": Beyond Human-Robot Conversation | |
| 09:50 | 10:05 | Silvia Rossi - Personalized home-care support for the elderly: a field experience with a social robot at home | |
| 10:05 | 10:20 | wrap up session 1 | |
| Coffee Break | |||
| 10:40 | 10:55 | Mariacarla Staffa - Towards new HRI Paradigms in SAR | |
| 10:55 | 11:10 | Stefano Tortora - WALKin: Intelligent robotic walker guide for powered exoskeletons with neural interface | |
| 11:10 | 11:25 | Laura Fiorini - Socially Assistive Robotics in real world: Challenges and Lessons Learned | |
| 11:25 | 12:00 | Wrap up & Discussion |