REINS
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Engineering
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Sarwar, O
(2018)
Temporally smooth privacy protected airborne videos
Sornkarn N
(2017)
Can a Soft Robotic Probe Use Stiffness Control Like a Human Finger to Improve Efficacy of Haptic Perception?
in IEEE transactions on haptics
Sornkarn N
(2016)
Morphological Computation of Haptic Perception of a Controllable Stiffness Probe.
in PloS one
Tomo T
(2018)
A New Silicone Structure for uSkin-A Soft, Distributed, Digital 3-Axis Skin Sensor and Its Integration on the Humanoid Robot iCub
in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Vicente P
(2018)
Markerless Eye-Hand Kinematic Calibration on the iCub Humanoid Robot.
in Frontiers in robotics and AI
Wang L
(2018)
Tracking a moving sound source from a multi-rotor drone
Wegiriya H
(2020)
A Stiffness Controllable Multimodal Whisker Sensor Follicle for Texture Comparison
in IEEE Sensors Journal
Wijesundera I
(2013)
A Geographic Primitive-Based Bayesian Framework to Predict Cyclone-Induced Flooding*
in Journal of Hydrometeorology
| Description | 1. Human-human demonstrations of guiding showed that the guider uses on average, a 3rd order predictive policy to take current guiding actions based on predicted errors of the follower. 2. The follower uses on average, a 2nd order reactive policy to make current movements based on past commands given by the guider. 3. When the follower's movements in response to tug forces generated by the guider is modeled using a virtual damped inertial model (virtual model because, followers movements largely comes from voluntary forces than due to tug forces of the guider), the variability of the damping coefficient reliably reflects the variability of the follower's trust in the guider. 4. When control policy identified from human demonstration experiments was implemented on a planar 1-DoF robotic arm to perturb the blindfolded subjects' most dominant arm in leftward/rightward directions, it was found that naive subjects elicit a 2nd order reactive behaviour similar to human demonstration experiments. However, trained subjects developed 2nd order predictive following behaviour. 5. Naive and trained subjects' arm muscle activation is significantly different in leftward/rightward arm perturbation. 6. When humans are trained with primitive vibroactuator array patterns given in a sleeve worn in the arm, they can accurately recognize linear combinations of those patterns. The low/no visibility constraint ensures the focus is on the tactile and haptic aspects only. The research aims to map the communicational landscape in which humans (fire fighters, but also the visually impaired) might be working with robots, with the emphasis on tactile and haptic interaction. In the initial phase, we conducted human-human interaction experiments to find the salient features where one person with limited auditory and visual perception of the environment ( human), is guided by an agent with full perceptual capabilities (assume as robot/machine), via a hard rein along a given path. Key findings: 1. We defined the state as the relative orientation difference between the human guider (a guider) and the human follower (a follower), the angle of the rein relative to the guider as an action. Numerical novel auto regressive model of linear discrete control policy of the guider and the follower was proposed. The results show the guider learns 3rd order predictive control policy to guide the human follower, while the follower learns 2nd order reactive model to follow the guider. 2. While learning the control policy, we tried to understand gradual change in muscle activation of the guider across the trials to see optimality of total effort to generate actions in the actuation space by the guider. The results show that the total muscle activation increases to a maximum around the mid of the trials (20 trials, 10 pairs) and then decreases in last 10 trials. This suggests that effort optimization is a non-monotonic process. During the first 10 trials, participants may have given priority to order selection than optimization in the actuation space. 3. To study human (the follower) confidence towards the guiding agent, a confidence model is proposed (to study the virtual damping coefficient and the virtual mass with pushing/pulling force). Experiments were conducted on three different paths (straight / 60 degree turn / 90 degree turn). Our experimental results of human participants show that the variability of the virtual damping coefficients correlates more with the complexity of the path. Furthermore, When the follower drops confidence in 60 degree turn and 90 degree turn, the guider has to exert a higher tug force to take following agent into desired trajectory that leads to higher average values for the virtual mass and virtual damping coefficient. |
| Exploitation Route | At present we are planning to carry out an impact acceleration project in collaboration with the Fire Service College, Gloucestershire. This involves testing an outdoor version of the robot in a simulated fire-fighting scenario. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics |
| URL | http://thrish.org/research-team/anuradha-ranasinghe |
| Description | Cultural impact: Contributed to collaboration with King's Cultural Institute to develop a human-robot dancing systems and event. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | "The brain is lazy" highlighting the clever ways it takes to condition the body to simplify autonomous control |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | UK/US Bio-inspired Unmanned Autonomous Systems (BioUAS) Plenary talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Active search for haptic information in the impedance domain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | IEEE ICRA2018, Invited workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE ICRA2018 on "Active search for haptic information in the impedance domain", Brisbane, Australia |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Brain is the last resort |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | IEEE ICRA2018 Plenary workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE ICRA2018 on "Brain is the last resort" Brisbane, Australia |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Embodied computation of perception and action for fast uncertainty reduction |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2019, Plenary workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara on "Embodied computation of perception and action for fast uncertainty reduction", Freiburg, Germany |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Haptic information gain in the impedance domain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | IEEE RoboSoft 2018, Plenary workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE RoboSoft 2018 on "Haptic information gain in the impedance domain" Levorno, Italy |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | If robots were to survive like living beings in uncertain environments |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | IMechE Christmas event, Keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IMechE Christmas event - "Tinkering" on "If robots were to survive like living beings in uncertain environments", London, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Morphological Computation Through Physical Adaptation of Soft Robots |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | IEEE RoboSoft 2019 Workshop organizer and workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE RoboSoft 2019 on "Morphological Computation Through Physical Adaptation of Soft Robots" Seoul, South Korea |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Morphological computation - The role of the physical circuits in the body in the computation of perception and action |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Jilin University, Keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at International Workshop on Bioinspiration on "Morphological computation - The role of the physical circuits in the body in the computation of perception and action", Jilin, China |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Soft Robotic Patients for Medical Education |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | RCGP-2018, Workshop keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at Royal College of General Practitioners annual conference on "Soft Robotic Patients for Medical Education", Glasgow, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Soft Robotics for Rehabilitation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Xuzhuo Central Hospital, Keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at Xuzhou Central Hospital on "Soft Robotics for Rehabilitation", Xuzhou, China |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Soft robotics for sustainable rainforest communities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | LIPI workshop, Keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at Indonesia Institute of Science and technology on "Soft robotics for sustainable rainforest communities", Bandung, Indonesia |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Survival in uncertain environments with slow communication pathways - evidence from morphological computation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | IEEE PIMRC, Plenary keynote talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE PIMRC on "Survival in uncertain environments with slow communication pathways - evidence from morphological computation", Montreal, Canada |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Surviving in an uncertain world with slow communication pathways |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | University of Leeds, Keynote by Thrishantha Nanayakkara on "Surviving in an uncertain world with slow communication pathways", Leeds, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Surviving with slow communication pathways |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 2nd UK manipulation workshop, Invited talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara on "Surviving with slow communication pathways", London, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Towards the nature of information processing in soft machines |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | IEEE RoboSoft 2019 Plenary workshop talk by Thrishantha Nanayakkara at IEEE RoboSoft 2019 on "Towards the nature of information processing in soft machines" Seoul, South Korea |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Trespass public event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Sponsored by the King's Cultural Institute, I worked with a choreographer to understand the parallels between programming the human body and programming robots to explore new meaning and opportunities in both fields. A public exposition was held on 31st March 2013, titled "translocations" (http://www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk/works/translocations/ ), where my views were subjected to public discussion. This led to a wider collaboration including Bartlett School Architecture at UCL, and the above cultural partners to showcase human-robot dancing in a public exhibition titled "Trespass" (https://vimeo.com/133691929). I participated in a panel moderated by New Scientist journalist Simon Ings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/133691929 |
| Description | Workshop on "Haptics for Healthcare" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | ERU-2017, Co-organizer and speaker in the Workshop on "Haptics for Healthcare", Edinburgh, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |