
Artificial and augmented sensing for humans and humanoids
- Days
- Hours
- Mintues
- Seconds
The number of students is limited to 60
About The Event
Brief description
The NeuroEngineering School, pioneered by Prof. M. Grattarola in 2000 with the First European School of Neuroengineering, was offered in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2012 and 2018. This edition will focus on perception and on how it influences human movements and robot control. Specifically, the focus will be on how the somatosensory system and its artificial analogues process and integrate movement, force and tactile information.
Objectives
The NeuroEngineering School aims to introduce PhD students and post-docs from different backgrounds (engineering, life sciences, physics) to the basis of human somatosensation and the computational and technological methods to integrate sensing in robots. The first two days will provide an overview of somatosensory process mechanisms at the physical, behavioural, biomechanical, and neural level, including implications for motor control and learning.
Then we will provide the basis for understanding the artificial tactile-proprioceptive sensing and feedback.The following three days will develop this topic in three translational fields: (1) neurorehabilitation (2) prosthetics and sensory restoration; (3) robotics: humanoids and robot-assisted surgery.
Description
The NeuroEngineering School will take place from 18th to 22nd July 2022. The activities will include plenary lectures by internationally recognized experts operating at the interface between Neuroscience, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Participants will then be divided in focused discussion groups, whose activities will include hands on computational and laboratory activities.
We will organize poster sessions for the PhD students attending the school, during which they will present their research in an interactive form. An award committee will select the best poster based both on the quality of the work and the presentation.
Finally, we will also offer exhibition opportunities for the companies working in these fields, which will present their technologies for all the duration of the school.

Who's Speaking?





Speakers Lineup

Registration
Registration
Opening of the School
Welcome Address - Presentation of the School

To be defined
To be defined
Prof. Antonio Bicchi
When timing matters: from intracerebral recordings to a 4D-representation of somatosensory processing

Coffee Break
Coffee Break/ Networking

Laboratory activities - Data Science for Psychophysical Data with R
Practical activities (1st session)
- examples of experimental paradigms
- psychometric functions and GLMM
- Bayesian methods in psychophysics
- R, Python, and friends
- Introduction to R packages: Tidyverse, lme4, Mixedpsy
- Data Tidying
- Modelling
- Plotting
- Communicating the results with RMarkdown
- Bonus track: interfacing R and Python with reticulate
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Moscatelli, A., Mezzetti, M., & Lacquaniti, F. (2012). Modeling psychophysical data at the population-level: the generalized linear mixed model. Journal of vision, 12(11), 26-26.
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Rohde, M., van Dam, L. C., & Ernst, M. O. (2016). Statistically optimal multisensory cue integration: a practical tutorial. Multisensory research, 29(4-5), 279-317.
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Wickham, H., & Grolemund, G. (2016). R for data science: import, tidy, transform, visualize, and model data. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.".

Welcome cocktail

To be defined

To Be defined

Coffee Break
Coffee Break/Networking

Innovative methods for measuring the neural correlates of proprioception in multiple sclerosis
This limitation makes it difficult to identify crucial neural markers that can be used to assess the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving proprioception in people with MS. Therefore, there is a need for innovative ways of assessing the neural correlates of proprioception to understand how the pathological processes underlying MS affects these neural processes.
Sensorimotor tasks, such as the joint position matching task, rely on intricate communication between multiple areas of the CNS. To perform these movements effectively, sensory afferents must be relayed to various areas of the brain to generate appropriate neural and behavioral responses
Our group and others have shown the importance of the link between cognitive and motor processes in many sensorimotor tasks as well as the importance of microstructural integrity of the corpus callosum in bipedal and bimanual tasks. A better understanding of how the functional and neural components of proprioception are affected by chronic neurodegenerative disease like MS is needed to better inform rehabilitative practices, which may ultimately lead to the improvement of mobility outcomes and quality of life in patients with MS.

Poster section
Poster section/Networking

Poster section/Lunch Networking
Poster section/Lunch

The sensorimotor bases of interaction with the world and with others
Human understanding of the world is deeply rooted in our ability to act. The shape of our body and the possibilities of action it affords influence how we make sense of objects’ properties and other people’s actions.
In the context of object perception, this becomes particularly evident in the domain of haptic exploration, where action and perception are tightly coupled. The investigation of how manipulation is optimally planned to infer the relevant features of an object leads to interesting questions on the relative role played by different senses and on the mutual adaptation of the sensory and motor components of the plan. Studying how this process develops during childhood and how it changes during an interaction or in the presence of a sensory deficit can also provide novel insights potentially useful for robot manipulation.
Furthermore, the way we plan our actions has a crucial impact on understanding the properties of movements performed by others. We differently move when we are aggressive or kind, and our brain detects the same modulations in someone else, making us sensitive to the “style” of an action. Interestingly, this happens both when the interaction is mediated by vision and performed through a physical exchange of forces. By intuitively sensing the regularities of action “style”, we modify our anticipation skills, e.g., when predicting action timing and our behavior, which automatically aligns with the partner in human-human and human-robot interactions.
Understanding the sensorimotor bases of human ability to interact is a crucial step toward developing cognitive robots, able to perceive the world “through the eyes (and hands) of a human” and hence better at establishing mutual understanding and effective collaboration.

Multisensory development and sensory rehabilitation devices based on haptic, visual, and audio signals.

Practical activities (2st session)
To be defined

Coffee Break
Coffee Break/Networking

Peripheral aspects of somatosensation

To be defined

Coffee Break
Coffee Break Networking

To be defined

Poster session
Poster sessionNetworking
Lunch/Networking
Lunch / Poster session
Lunch / Poster session

To be defined
To be defined
Prof. Giacomo Valle
To be defined
To be defined
Prof. Marco Controzzi
Social event
To be defined

School dinner
School dinner

The iCub project

From sensing to actuation: End-to-End Research in Robotics at Deepmind.

Coffee Break
Coffee Break/ Networking

Seeing and touching objects: experiments with the iCub humanoid robot
In this talk I will introduce the sensory system we developed for the iCub humanoid robot, and in particular technologies for tactile sensing. I will then revise past work in which we studied how to use visual and tactile feedback to explore unknown objects and control the interaction between the hand and the objecst for shape modelling, object discrimination and tracking. Finally, I will present recent work in which we developed fast learning algorithms for object segementation and active learning.

Poster session
Poster session / Networking
Lunch / Networking
Lunch/Poster session
Lunch/Poster session

To be defined
To be defined
Prof. Gordon Cheng
Practical activities (3rd session)
To be defined

Coffee break
Coffee break

Practical activities (3rd session)
To be defined

To be defined
To be defined
Prof. Stanisa Raspopovic
Student presentation
Student presentation

Coffee Break
Coffee Break / Networking

Discussion
Discussion

Award and closure ceremonies
Award and closure ceremonies
Pricing & Registration
- Full-days Access of the School
- Coffee Breaks
- Lunches
- Social Activities
- Social Dinner
- Reduced Fee : 30 May 2022
- Full-days Access of the School
- Coffee Breaks
- Lunches
- Social Activities
- Social Dinner
- Fee : 1 June - 10 July 2022
Do you have any special needs, disabilities, and/or dietary restrictions that we may address to make your participation more enjoyable?
Do not hesitate to contact us info@neuroengineering.unige.net
For further information concerning your registration, please, contact only info@neuroengineering.unige.net
With the UNIGE credentials you can access restricted areas of the school website (will be activated as soon as possible) for additional materials.
Organizers


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Contact
Our Address
DIBRIS
Department of Informatics, Bioengineering,
Robotics and Systems Engineering
Location

Villa Cambiaso (Scuola Politecnica)
Via Montallegro 1
The summer school will be held 18 to 22 July 2022 at Villa Cambiaso, based of the Presidency of the Scuola Politecnica of the University of Genova, located in the district of Albaro, in Montallegro Street 1. Villa Giustiniani Cambiaso, designed by Galeazzo Alessi and built starting in 1548, is an architectural example of the "Genovese Villas" of the 16th and 17th centuries.
How to reach us
VOLABUS is a direct daily, comfortable service running 7 days a week, stopping at few pick up points (to airport only pick up, from airport only drop off). Alternatively, a taxi ride between the airport and the city centre costs approximately € 30-20.
By Train : The nearest train station to the Villa Cambiano is Genova Brignole. There are numerous Intercity trains from Milan Central to Genova Principe (some of them continue to Brignole), approximately one every hour. There are also Eurostar, Intercity, Frecciarossa trains from RomaTermini and Turin.
Trasportation within the city : To access Villa Cambiaso there are regular buses with stops located near the Genova Brignole Train Station. The bus stop (15 or 43) is located in Corso Buenos Aires. You need to get off at the fifth bus stop (Via Albaro), next t o the main entrance of Villa Cambiaso, in via Montallegro.In front Genova Principe Train Station, you can take any bus to the center city and, subsequently, the bus n. 15 or 43; alternatively, from Principe Train Station you can go to Genova Brignole in 5 minutes by local trains o metro.