The Observatory of Human-Machine Collaboration (OHMC) project launched last year as a collaborative venture between the Departments of Engineering and Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.
The second OHMC workshop was hosted by the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory on the 24th of September, 2021 and was chaired by Dr Fumiya Iida.
Due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the workshop was run as a hybrid event. A limited number of people were invited to attend the event in person and others watched workshop presentations and robotic demonstrations online.
Currently, the OHMC accommodates 5 research projects that represent different areas of human-robot collaborations, including agri-robotics. Despite the difficulties faced by academia last year, all projects involved demonstrated good progress and the workshop was a great opportunity for the researchers to report on their work.
OHMC Projects:
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‘Agri-station for automation and growth optimisation’ led by Dr Fulvio Forni (Department of Engineering, Agriforwards CDT)
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‘Personalised Emotional care uSing human-rObot iNterAction (PERSONA)’ led by Dr Hatice Gunes (Department of Computer Sciences and Technology)
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‘Low-Cost Intelligent Mixed Reality System for Responsive Human-Machine Interactions’ led by Dr Thomas Bohne (Cyber-Human Laboratory, IfM)
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‘Wearable optical monitoring of brain function in healthy adults and people at risk of dementia’ led by Dr Gemma Bale (Department of Physics)
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‘Eye tracking for 3D holographic displays’ led by Hannah Joyce (Department of Engineering)
The OHMC project also works on creating new opportunities for collaborations with companies and other research institutions. A talk by Matt Jones, a Principal Designer at Google AI, covered current interests of his research group at Google and
discussed how in Matt’s view AI technology could benefit the humankind in future.
After the presentations, both virtual attendees and those who were able to attend in person were invited to robotic demonstrations.
OHMC workshop demonstrations:
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Agri-automation tent (Fulvio Forni, Engineering)
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Robot Kitchen (Gregorz Sochacki, Agriforwards CDT/BIRL)
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Vegebot (Simon Birell, Elijah Almanzor, Agriforwards CDT/BIRL)
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NIRS headset/eye tracker (Gemma Bale, Hatice Gunes, Thomas George-Thuruthel, Engineering, Computer Sciences and Physics Departments )
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AR/VR training (Thomas Bohne, Cyber-Human Lab)
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Foodly Hymanoid Robot (Kieran Gilday, BIRL)
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Chairless Chair (Fumiya Iida, BIRL)
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Mobile manipulator (J Jiang, Kieran Gilday, CuS)
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ARM CuR Robokit (Jierui Sui, CuS )
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Robotic piano playing (Huijiang Wang, BIRL/SMART)
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MorphFace (Thilina Dulantha Lalitharatne, BIRL)
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Soft Ring Actuator (Ryman Hashem, BIRL)
The next OHMC workshop will happen in September 2022 and we hope that we will able to invite more people to take part in this event. Until then, we would like you to keep an eye on our web-site for new exciting developments in the Observatory of Human-Machine collaboration.
