The Robotics and Neuroscience of Supernumerary Limbs

             An ICRA 2023 full-day Workshop, 29 May 2023, London, United Kingdom

                      

                                                                                                 figure by Alexis Devillard

Robotic supernumerary limbs that can be controlled as intuitively as the natural limbs are a common depiction of science fiction that recent technological advances attempt to implement. By increasing a user’s degrees of freedom, these devices could enable them to perform complex tasks such as robotic surgery or industrial assembly. This full-day workshop will provide a platform to discuss the development of supernumerary limbs and their integration with human users. Complementing previous workshops on this topic that focused on hardware and control, this workshop will integrate aspects of human-robot interaction, such as the necessary robotics developments to make a supernumerary limb act/feel like a body part and the human factors that need to be considered to ensure safe and effective user integration. Through a series of presentations, 12 experts in neuroscience and robotics will present the current state of the art on topics including (i) interface development; (ii) supernumerary limb control; (iii) feedback and embodiment; and (iv) the learning of impact of augmentation on motor control. Moderated live Q&A panel discussions and device demonstrations will then allow the audience to join the discussion on the open questions and challenges facing this field in future research and industrial collaboration.

 

Topics of interest

  •  Interfaces for supernumerary limbs
  • Soft and wearable robotics
  • Artificial somatosensory feedback
  • Acceptance and Embodiment
  • Shared and augmented control
  • Learning and impact of motor augmentation

 

Tentative schedule 

All in BST Time

Session one: Robot and interface development
Talk 1 (9:00-9:20am): Domenico Prattichizzo (U of Siena) 
Talk 2 (9:20-9:40am): Chenglong Fu (Southern U of Science and Technology)
Talk 3 (9:40-10:00am): Elahe Abdi (Monash U)
Moderated discussion (10:00-10:30am)
Session two: Feedback and embodiment
Talk 1 (11:00-11:20am): Laura Marchal-Crespo (TU Delft)
Talk 2 (11:20-11:40am): Masahiko Inami (Tokyo)
Talk 3 (11:40-12:00am): Giovanni Di Pino (UCBM)
Moderated discussion (12:00-12:30pm)
Lunch and device demonstration (12:30pm-1:30pm)
Session three: Control
Talk 1 (1:30-1:50pm): Haruhiko Harry Asada (MIT)
Talk 2 (1:50-2:10pm): Nathanael Jarrasse (Sorbonne)
Talk 3 (2:10-2:30pm): Ildar Farkatdinov (Queen Mary U of London)
Moderated discussion (2:30-3:00pm)
Session four: Learning and impact of augmentation
Talk 1 (3:00-3:20pm): Tamar Makin (Cambridge U)
Talk 2 (3:20-3:40pm): Yanpei Huang (Imperial College London)
Talk 3 (3:40-4:00pm): Andrea D'Avella (U of Messina)
Moderated discussion (4:30-5:00pm)
Conclusion Marks and Closing

 

Organizers

  • Jonathan Eden, University of Melbourne
  • Yanpei Huang, Imperial College London
  • Giovanni Di Pino, Campus Bio-Medico Di Roma
  • Etienne Burdet, Imperial College London

 

Call for Contributions

The workshop will include a poster session for which we invite the submission of quality research contributions, including original research, preliminary results and proposals for new work. Submissions should consist of a poster (in PDF format) with an optional additional single page of supplementary material. All submissions will be peer reviewed and judged in terms of their contribution and relevance with respect to workshop (with topics listed below). Accepted submissions will be presented at the workshop and will be published (with an optional 2 minute video summary) on the workshop website. Further details are provided below.

Topics for submission should be limited to the fileds of:

  • Supernumerary limb device development
  • Interfaces to control supernumerary limbs
  • Artificial somatosensory feedback
  • Device acceptance and embodiment
  • Shared and augmented control
  • Learning and the impact of motor augmentation

Important dates

  • Submission deadline: March 24th 2023, extended to March 27th 2023
  • Author notification: April 3 2023
  • Camera-ready version deadline: May 1st 2023
  •  Workshop: May 29th 2023

Submission link 

Please submit through Easychair    All deadlines are 11:59pm, Anywhere on Earth.

Registration and attendance 

At least one author of each accepted workshop presentation has to register for at least the workshop sessions of the main ICRA conference (https://www.icra2023.org/registration).

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out the workshop organisers. 

Accepted posters

1. Alexis Devillard et al. “Multi-sensory integration Sensory augmentation enabling virtual interaction”.

2. Sajeeva Abeywardena et al. "Human Stance: A Tail of Balance".

3. E. Chao et al. "Design of Soft Cable-Driven Supernumerary Robotic Limb".

4. Mattia Pinardi et al. "Somatosensory Attenuation as a marker for Embodiment of Supernumerary Robotic Limbs".

5. Patricia Capsi-Motales et al. "Impact of Virtual Limb Augmentation for Myoelectrically-Controlled Mirror Therapy".

6. Davide Deiana et al. "Comparing different vibrotactile strategies to encode motor units’ activation states".

7. Mirco Mugnai et al. " Design and prototyping of a 5-DoF robotic extra-finger for human hand augmentation".

Supplementary video can be found at here

8. Eisa Anwar et al. "Handheld Sensor for Load Carrying".

Supplementary video can be found at here

9. T. Lisini Baldi et al. "Controlling a Supernumerary Robotic Finger Exploiting Intrinsic Kinematic Null Space".

Supplementary video can be found at here

10. Haolin Fei et al. "Learning-Based Anthropomorphic Servoing Framework for Supernumerary Limb Object Reaching".

Supplementary video can be found at here

11. Haoyi Zheng et al. "GRASP: A Wearable Robotic Device Design for Human Augmentation".