Two perspectives define a human being in his social sphere: appearance and behaviour. The aesthetic aspect is the first significant element that impacts a communication while the behavioural aspect is a crucial factor in evaluating the ongoing interaction. In particular, we have more expectations when interacting with anthropomorphic robots and we tend to define them believable if they respect human social conventions. Therefore researchers are focused both on increasingly anthropomorphizing the embodiment of the robots and on giving the robots a realistic behaviour.This paper describes our research on making a humanoid robot socially interacting with human beings in a believable way.
A context-aware attention system is fundamental for regulating the robot behaviour in a social interaction since it enables social robots to actively select the right environmental stimuli at the right time during a multiparty social interaction. This contribution presents a modular context-aware attention system which drives the robot gaze. It is composed by two modules: the scene analyzer module manages incoming data flow and provides a human-like understanding of the information coming from the surrounding environment; the attention module allows the robot to select the most important target in the perceived scene on the base of a computational model. After describing the motivation, we report the proposed system and the preliminary test.
The oft-abused phrase “genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger†can be applied to stem cells and stem cell niches as well as to cell–material interfaces. Much is known about cell–material interaction in general, perhaps a little less about how these interactions condition cell phenotype. With the increasing interest in stem cells and, in particular, their applications in tissue regeneration, the regulation of the stem cell microenvironment through modulation of intuitive or smart materials and structures, or what we term IBAS (Inherently Bio-Active Scaffolds) is poised to become a major field of research. Here, we discuss how cardiac regeneration strategies have undergone a gradual shift from the emphasis on biochemical signals and basic biology to one in which the material or scaffold plays a major role in establishing an equilibrium state. From being a constant battle or tug-of-war between the cells and synthetic environments, we conceive IBAS as intuitively responding to the cell’s requirements to instate a sort of equilibrium in the system.
Gearing up and accelerating cross-fertilization between academic and industrial robotics research in Europe - Technology transfer experiments from the ECHORD project
The scientific goal of HANDS.DVI consists of developing a common
framework to programming robotic hands independently from their kinematics,
mechanical construction, and sensor equipment complexity. Recent results on the
organization of the human hand in grasping and manipulation are the inspiration
for this experiment. The reduced set of parameters that we effectively use to control
our hands is known in the literature as the set of synergies. The synergistic
organization of the human hand is the theoretical foundation of the innovative approach
to design a unified framework for robotic hands control. Theoretical tools
have been studied to design a suitable mapping function of the control action (decomposed
in its elemental action) from a human hand model domain onto the
articulated robotic hand co-domain. The developed control framework has been
applied on an experimental set up consisting of two robotic hands with dissimilar
kinematics grasping an object instrumented with force sensors.
In this chapter, the design, fabrication process and preliminary tests of a Multi- Compartmental Modular Bioreactor used as a system for dynamic cell cultures and co-cultures is described. Although the microwell (MW) plate has become a standard in cell culture, the complexity of the physiological environment is not replicated in petri dishes or microplates. All cells are exquisitely sensitive to their micro-environment which is rich with cues from other cells and from mechanical stimuli due to flow, perfusion and movement. Microwells do not offer any form of dynamic chemical or physical stimulus to cells, such as concentration gradients, flow, pressure or mechanical stress. This is a major limitation in experiments investigating cellular responses in-vitro since the complex interplay of mechanical and biochemical factors is absent. Most researchers and industry have started to accept that classical in vitro experiments offer poor predictive value or mechanistic understanding and are shifting their interests to new technologies such as bioreactors. For this reason, a large number of bioreactor systems for cell culture have been recently designed and described. With the purpose of developing cell culture models to establish a physiological-like interaction between different cell types, a novel Multi-Compartmental Modular Bioreactor (MCmB)was realized. The modular chamber was designed with shape and dimensions similar to the 24-MultiWell allowing an easy transfer of microwell protocols. The MCmB consists of a cell culture chamber made of bio-compatible silicon polymer, with excellent self-sealing proprieties, transparency and flexibility. The modular chambers can be also connected together in series or in parallel as desired, in order to allow cell-cell cross-talk or replicate in vitro models of metabolism or diseases using allometric design principles. In this chapter we describe the bioreactor design process starting from a finite-element method (FEM) model, developed in order to study the shear stress and the oxygen concentration at the cell surface. A further version of the MCmB is also described, in which a semipermeable membrane is placed into the bioreactor allowing to create a double-chamber system (MCmB-dc) for biological barriers simulation like for example lung or intestine. Allometric methods for designing in-vitro organ models using combinations of different cell types or tissues cultured in different chambers are also presented. Allometric laws mathematically correlate non linear quantities such as organ mass, blood flow, blood retention time and metabolic rate. Using these laws the modules can be assembled in various configurations enabling organ and system physiology to be recapitulated in vitro. Preliminary experiments using the modules are also described.
