The Robotics Forum showcased their latest research at ICRA2023 through exhibitions, demos, presentations and workshops.

The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is one of the premier conferences in its field, attracting thousands of participants from around the world every year. The 2023 edition was held in London and included over 6,000 participants from 66 countries, 1341 papers, 58 workshops, 127 exhibitors, and renowned keynote speakers of the likes of MIT's Hugh Herr (named "the Leader of the Bionic Age" by Time Magazine) and Boston Dynamic's founder Marc Raibert, the pioneer of highly dynamic robots.

Imperial had a strong presence this year through the Imperial Robotics Forum, a network of excellence bringing together 40+ principal investigators working on robotics across the College.

The Forum's core working team showcased their latest results through live demos, presentations, and workshops:

The Manipulation and Touch Lab (led by Dr Ad Spiers, EEE) showcased their research on a variety of robotic grippers including E-TRoll, a 3-DOF robotic hand optimised for object rolling tasks, Variable Friction Robotic Grippers, which enable in-hand-manipulation with fewer actuators than normally required, and InstaGrasp an entirely 3D printed, low-cost, adaptive robotic gripper that is significantly easier to fabricate, maintain, and modify than existing open-source solutions.

The Robot Learning Lab (led by Dr Edward Johns, Computing) demonstrated a novel method allowing robots to learn and perform tasks immediately from single demonstrations, without any further data collection or training. Members of the audience were able to teach the robot everyday tasks, such as picking up an object, opening the lid of a box, and hammering in a nail with a toy hammer.

The Aerial Robotics Lab (led by Prof Mirko Kovac, Aeronautics) showcased their work on aerial additive manufacturing (Aerial-AM), a framework that uses teams of aerial robots (BuilDrones and ScanDrones) to autonomously 3D print a variety of geometries and assess print quality in real-time. Their demo included the BuilDrone, a novel aerial robot housing a parallel manipulator for high precision printing.

The Insect Sensorimotor Control Lab (led by Prof Holger Krapp, Bioengineering), engaged the audience with a ‘fly-vision’ virtual reality demo, where attendees used a VR headset in a seated setting to experience insect-like vision. The team also showcased their fly-robot interface (FRI), a wheeled robot controlled by the neuronal signals of a live onboard blowfly.

The Morph Lab (led by Prof Thrishantha Nanayakkara, Dyson School of Design Engineering) demonstrated their RoboPatient, an augmented reality system for medical examination training. The RoboPatient system is capable of displaying real-time visualisation of facial expressions and stress distribution on internal organs (e.g. liver) during abdominal palpation training.

The Mechatronics in Medicine Lab (led by Prof Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, Mechanical Engineering) shared their work on soft robots for minimally-invasive surgery. This included a soft growing robot that navigates through endoluminal anatomies (such as the colon) by changing shape and growing speed, a soft robotic manipulator for endoluminal surgery, and CathBot an AI-driven robotic catheter system for ultrasound guided endovascular surgery.

The Human Robotics Group (led by Prof Etienne Burdet, Bioengineering) displayed interactive demos, including portable setups for ‘augmented’ hands with an extra robotic finger and/or vision based interaction to provide extra sensing in low-visibility environments.  

In addition to a vibrant 3-day exhibition, the Forum had 18 accepted publications which were featured during oral and poster sessions:

• Tactile Identification of Object Shapes via In-Hand Manipulation with A Minimalistic Barometric Tactile Sensor Array - X. Zhou; A. J. Spiers
• Immersive Demonstrations are the Key to Imitation Learning - K. Li; D. Chappell; N. Rojas
• Mechanical Intelligence for Prehensile In-Hand Manipulation of Spatial Trajectories - Q. Lu; Z. Gan; X. Wang; G. Bai; Z. Zhang; N. Rojas
• Efficient Learning of Locomotion Skills through the Discovery of Diverse Environmental Trajectory Generator Priors - S. Surana; B. Lim; A. Cully
• Learning Tethered Perching for Aerial Robots - F. Hauf; B. B. Kocer; A. Slatter; H. -N. Nguyen; O. Pang; R. Clark; E. Johns; M. Kovac
• Evaluating Immersive Teleoperation Interfaces: Coordinating Robot Radiation Monitoring Tasks in Nuclear Facilities - H. Stedman; B. B. Kocer; N. van Zalk; M. Kovac; V. M. Pawar
• iMODE:Real-Time Incremental Monocular Dense Mapping Using Neural Field - H. Matsuki; E. Sucar; T. Laidow; K. Wada; R. Scona; A. J. Davison
• Feature-Realistic Neural Fusion for Real-Time, Open Set Scene Understanding - K. Mazur; E. Sucar; A. J. Davison
• Foot gestures to control the grasping of a surgical robot - Y. Cheng; Y. Huang; Z. Wang; E. Burdet
• Model Based Position Control of Soft Hydraulic Actuators - M. Runciman; E. Franco; J. Avery; F. Rodriguez y Baena; G. Mylonas
• Discrete-time model based control of soft manipulator with FBG sensing - E. Franco; A. Aktas; S. Treratanakulchai; A. Garriga-Casanovas; A. Donder; F. Rodriguez y Baena
• A Method to Use Haptic Feedback of Laryngoscope Force Vector for Endotracheal Intubation Training - H. Zhou; S. Yang; L. Halamek; T. Nanayakkara
• Semi-autonomous robotic control of a self-shaping cochlear implant - D. Bautista-Salinas; C. Kirby; M. E. M. K. Abdelaziz; B. Temelkuran; C. T. Huins; F. Rodriguez y Baena
• Bi-Manual Manipulation of Multi-Component Garments towards Robot-Assisted Dressing - S. Kotsovolis; Y. Demiris
• Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display User Interface for Controlling Legged Manipulators - R. C. Quesada; Y. Demiris
• Graph-based Pose Estimation of Texture-less Surgical Tools for Autonomous Robot Control - H. Xu; M. Runciman; J. Cartucho; C. Xu; S. Giannarou
• Large-Scale Radar Localization using Online Public Maps - Z. Hong; Y. Petillot; K. Zhang; S. Xu; S. Wang
• Observability-Aware Active Extrinsic Calibration of Multiple Sensors - S. Xu; J. S. Willners; Z. Hong; K. Zhang; Y. R. Petillot; S. Wang

Workshop on "Robot assisted safe manipulation of hazardous materials" 

Following-up on existing collaborations with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), the Forum co-organised a workshop on "Robot assisted safe manipulation of hazardous materials". This workshop brought together roboticists and DSTL experts to discuss the challenges of handling highly hazardous materials (e.g., explosives, chemical/biological agents, and radioactive materials), and the opportunities to address these by drawing solutions from multiple areas in robotics, including grasping, bimanual manipulation, multimodal perception and semi-autonomous human – robot interaction.

The Forum would like to thank its network manager, the exhibiting principal investigators, their teams and volunteers for their commitment and enthusiasm, which made this event possible!