RoboTac
Lab

Dr. Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich, focussing on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning. He is also research professor in the CS faculty at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. He did his PhD and MSc at Amsterdam’s universities, and was then leading the Assistive Robotics and Bionics Lab at the DLR Oberpfaffenhofen and Professor at TUM. He is founding chairman of a non-for-profit organisation for Assistive Robotics for tetraplegics and co-founder of various tech companies. In 2018, he started a for-good initiative 10toGO by supporting teams using machine learning for the UN SDGs. Also then, he initiated etami, an initiative on Ethical and Trustworthy Artificial and Machine Intelligence, creating an organisation with almost 20 multinationals and universities.

Dr. Harold Soh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he directs the Collaborative Learning and Adaptive Robots (CLeAR) group. Harold completed his Ph.D. at Imperial College London on online learning for assistive robots. Harold’s current research focuses on machine learning and decision-making for trustworthy collaborative robots. His work spans cognitive modeling (e.g., human trust) to physical systems (e.g., tactile perception with novel e-skins). He is an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Human Robot Interaction, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), and Robotics Automation and Letters (RA-L). 

Dr. Lucia Seminara is Associate Professor in the Department of Naval Engineering, Electrical, Electronics and Telecommunications of Universita di Genova. Her research goal is to develop electronic systems to artificially restore the sense of touch. Her interests relate to closing the sensorimotor control loop in different applications (e.g. prosthetics) and for neurorehabilitation, developing innovative human-machine haptic interfaces to measure touch (e-skin) and give back intuitive touch information to the subject non invasively (eg electrotactile stimulation). Lucia studied Physics until the MSc at the Universita di Genova and then obtained a Ph.D. in physics from EPFL, Switzerland.

Dr. Lilian Hsiao is Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the NC State University in USA. She studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, followed by a postdoc at MIT. Lilian and her research group use an interdisciplinary approach that combines experiments and models from materials science, chemical engineering, physics, and mechanical engineering to understand the roles of structure and dynamics in soft materials and complex fluids. In particular, they use microscopy and triborheology to identify the frameworks used to engineer the mechanical properties of soft surfaces. The results can be applied to many fields: understanding of nanoscale forces in non-spherical particulate systems, revealing the biomechanics of lubricated joints that make movement possible, and developing new types of materials with directional properties that are not found in nature

Dr. Stephen Redmond is an Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD). Dr. Redmond and his group use signal processing and pattern recognition techniques, combined with novel sensing hardware solutions, to bring longitudinal health monitoring into the home. He also has a research stream on tactile sensing, spanning from the study of human tactile physiology, through to the development of friction-sensing tactile sensors for robotic grippers. He completed his undergraduate studies and Ph.D. at UCD, then spent 10 years as an Academic at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, before returning to UCD in 2018 to lead a Science Foundation Future Research Leaders Award project on tactile sensing. He is also a co-founder of the tactile sensor company Contactile: www.contactile.com

Dr. Firat Güder is a principal investigator in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Firat and his team work in the interface of material science, electronics, chemistry and biology, focusing on the development of intelligent interfaces to connect complex chemical and biological systems with machines. Firat is passionate about solving problems concerning animal and human health, agriculture and food systems. In addition to his scholarly activities, he has also co-founded multiple startups to translate his research to address real world problems. For more information on Güder Research Group please visit www.guderesearch.com

Dr. Thorsten Schwarz is directing the Accessibility Lab of the Center for Digital Accessibility and Assistive Technologies (ACCESS@KIT) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and is responsible for digital accessible literature preparation for students with visual impairments. His research focusses on digital accessibility and new access to information for all e.g. using artificial intelligence. In order to anchor the topic of digital inclusion more firmly in everyday (university) life, he is also involved in the "Digital Accessibility" working group of the Higher Education Forum on Digitization and the European Network of Excellence in the field of "Social inclusion". In addition, he has been giving lectures on the topic of "Digital Accessibility and Assistive Technologies" in both master's and teaching degree programs at KIT since 2012.

Dr. Andre Seyfarth and his Lauflabor Locomotion Lab at TU Darmstadt in Germany are doing research in the biomechanics and neuromechanics of human gait and running, and develop new measurement and analysis methods for studying movement. André Seyfarth studied physics and has a Ph.D. in biomechanics from Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena, Germany. He subsequently was an Emmy Noether fellow at University of Zurich and at MIT. He currently is a Professor of sports biomechanics with the Department of Human Sciences, TU Darmstadt.