Robotics research drives improvements in our society. Top research from Imperial academics has international audiences.

Showcasing robotics research from Imperial College at the top robotics conference of 2019

Robotic solutions are improving our lives, contributing innovative solutions in our healthcare, providing interactive help in our homes and ensuring the safe and smart use of our infrastructure. Fundamental robotics research at Imperial College London is helping to drive this change, and 2019 has so far seen 25 papers from the labs that make up the Imperial Robotics Forum accepted into the top three robotics conferences of the year.             

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

Aerial Inspection at close proximity of a vertical surface: a multi-modal mobility approach, H-N. Nguyen, B. Stephens, M. Kovac – Aerial Robotics Lab

A tether-powered automatic scanning system for repetitive monitoring. C. Liu, M. Kovac –Aerial Robotics Lab

Gaze-based, Context-aware Robotic System for Assisted Reaching and Grasping, Ali Shafti, Pavel Orlov, A. Aldo Faisal – Brain and Behaviour Lab

A Gaze-contingent Robotized Flexible Endoscope. A. Kogkas, B. Glover, N. Patel, A. Darzi, G. Mylonas - HARMS Lab

Gaze-contingent Robotic Assistance in the Operating Theatre.  A. Kogkas, A. Ezzat, R. Thakkar, A. Darzi, G Mylonas - HARMS Lab

Deployable Soft Robotic Arm with Stiffness Modulation for Assistive Living Applications. J. Fathi, T. Vrielink, M. Runciman, G. Mylonas - HARMS Lab

Shape Sensing of Variable Stiffness Soft Robots using Electrical Impedance Tomography (Shortlisted for Best Medical Robotics Paper Prize). J. Avery, M. Runciman, A. Darzi, G. Mylonas - HARMS Lab

Stiffness-Tuneable Limb Segment with Flexible Spine for Malleable Robots. Angus B. Clark and Nicolas Rojas – REDS Lab 

MID-Fusion: Octree-based Object-Level Multi-Instance Dynamic SLAM, Binbin Xu, Wenbin Li, Dimos Tzoumanikas, Michael Bloesch, Andrew J Davison, Stefan Leutenegger – Smart Robotics Lab

DeepFusion: Real-Time Dense 3D Reconstruction for Monocular SLAM using Single-View Depth and Gradient Predictions, Tristan Laidlow, Jan Czarnowski, Stefan Leutenegger – Dyson Robotics Lab

KO-Fusion: Dense Visual SLAM with Tightly-Coupled Kinematic and Odometric Tracking, Charles F Houseago, Michael Bloesch, Stefan Leutenegger – Dyson Robotics Lab

Soft Haptics for the Simulation of Physical Examinations: A Case Study for Sphincter Tone Rendering (Joint Second Best Paper of the Workshop Prize). R Haghighi Osgouei, L Maréchal, T Dhome-Casanova, C Kontovounisios, F Bello – SiMMS Lab

Characterizing Visual Localization and Mapping Datasets. Sajad Saeedi, E Carvalho, Wenbin Li, Dimos Tzoumanikas, Stefan Leutenegger, Paul HJ Kelly, Andrew J Davison – Robot Vision Group/Software Performance Optimisation Group

SLAMBench 3.0: Systematic Automated Reproducible Evaluation of SLAM Systems for Robot Vision Challenges and Scene Understanding. Mihai Bujanca, Paul-Adrian Gafton, Sajad Saeedi, Andrew Nisbet, Bruno Bodin, Michael F P O’Boyle, Andrew J Davison, Paul H J Kelly, Graham Riley, Barry Lennox, Mikel Luján, Steve Furber – Robot Vision Group/Software Performance Optimisation Group

A Mechanics-Based Model for 3-D Steering of Programmable Bevel-Tip Needles. Thomas Watts, Riccardo Secoli, Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena – Mechatronics in Medicine Lab

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)

Reduced Order vs. Discretized Lumped System Models with Absolute and Relative States for Continuum Manipulators, Seyedmohammadhadi Sadati, Ali Shiva, Seyedeh Elnaz Naghibi, Caleb Rucker, Ludovic Renson, Christos Bergeles, Kaspar Althoefer, Thrishantha Nanayakkara, Helmut Hauser, Ian Walker – Morph Lab

IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

SailMAV: design and implementation of a novel multi-modal flying sailing robot. R. Zufferey, A. Ortega, C. Raposo, S. Armanini, A. Farinha, R. Siddall, I. Barasaluce, H. Zhu, M. Kovac - Aerial Robotics Lab

An Integrated Delta Manipulator for Aerial Repair. P. Chermprayong, K. Zhang, F. Xiao and M Kovac – Aerial Robotics Lab

Dot-to-Dot: Explainable Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation. Benjamin Beyret, Ali Shafti, A. Aldo Faisal – Brain and Behaviour Lab

Informed Region Selection for Efficient UAV-based Object Detectors: Altitude-aware Vehicle Detection with CyCAR Dataset. Alexandros Kouris, Christos Kyrkou and Christos-Savvas Bouganis – iDSL Lab

Augmented Reality Controlled Smart Wheelchair Using Dynamic Signifiers for Affordance Representation, Rodrigo Chacon-Quesada and Yiannis Demiris – Personal Robotics Lab

Inference of user-intention in remote robot wheelchair assistance using multimodal interfaces, Vinicius Barbosa Schettino and Yiannis Demiris – Personal Robotics Lab

Towards Explainable Shared Control using Augmented Reality, Mark Zolotas and Yiannis Demiris – Personal Robotics Lab

Sim-to-Real Learning for Casualty Detection from Ground Projected Point Cloud Data. Roni Saputra, Nemanja Rakicevic, Petar Kormushev – Robot Intelligence Lab

Human robot visual interface for 3D steering of a flexible, bio-inspired needle for brain surgery. Eloise Matheson, Riccardo Secoli, Stefano Galvan, Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena – MiM Lab