Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INTUITIVE (INnovative Network for Training in ToUch InteracTIVE Interfaces)
Berichtszeitraum: 2019-10-01 bis 2021-09-30
INTUITIVE is an innovative training network for early stage researchers in the multidisciplinary fields of haptics, haptics technology, neurotechnology, human robotics, robotics, flexible electronics and nanotechnology. The aims are (1) to understand haptics processing within the human brain, paving the ground for designing better user haptics interfaces to be applied in virtual reality and remote operation; (2) to understand how skin biomechanics impact the neural signals generated in a user-interface interaction, again to pave the ground for design; (3) Develop biomimetic signal processing based on tactile primitives and investigate computational functions in typical haptic recognition tasks; (4) Develop biomimetic tactile skin for tomorrow’s touch/haptic and assistive technology; (5) Demonstrate new strategies for robotic haptic manipulation and tactile displays for blind. INTUITIVE also have as a main objective to ensure quick transition of innovation to industry by directly involving key industrial partners, thus leverage the strength of the EU in strategic fields of haptics, flexible electronics and human robotics.
INTUITIVE is set to reach these aims by academic and industrial partners with a strong competence in relevant subfields. Through a strong recruitment strategy bolstered by the wide networks of individual principal investigators of the partners, INTUITIVE have managed to recruit a strong set of ESRs, inspired to take on the challenges set out by the objectives of the project. In order to foster innovative and independent researchers, a strong focus on soft complementary skills such as the process from bringing a lab innovation into a patent, how to pitch a research finding efficiently and other aspects of conducting research and development.
INTUITIVE is set to reach these aims by academic and industrial partners with a strong competence in relevant subfields. Through a strong recruitment strategy bolstered by the wide networks of individual principal investigators of the partners, INTUITIVE have managed to recruit a strong set of ESRs, inspired to take on the challenges set out by the objectives of the project. In order to foster innovative and independent researchers, a strong focus on soft complementary skills such as the process from bringing a lab innovation into a patent, how to pitch a research finding efficiently and other aspects of conducting research and development.
In the period, the work was substantially set back by the pandemic. Nevertheless, we have managed to complete the recruitment process, and now have an exceptionally strong set of ESRs working on different aspects of the above objectives. Whereas a couple of the ESRs have been active for more than a year, most ESRs could only start within the last year, in a couple of cases only within the last half year. Yet, the ongoing research work has rapidly accelerated and INTUITIVE is today a bustling project with lots of major progresses achieved already, and intense interaction between academia and industry. The first research school was a major success, despite that the pandemic unfortunately forced it to be a remote meeting, which fostered a gradually growing joint enthusiasm for all the exciting research projects within the project. In this report we provide snapshots of those exciting initial steps provided by our highly motivated ESRs.
Despite the pandemic, the ongoing research work has rapidly accelerated and INTUITIVE is today a bustling project with lots of major progresses achieved already, and intense interaction between academia and industry. INTUITIVE is developing technology for new types of interfaces in the industrial field of metaverse, which is predicted to be a main driver in the economy this year and many years to come (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/01/meta-apple-google-microsoft-gear-up-for-big-augmented-reality-year.html). Metaverse is today heavily focused on vision, but the industrial field has also realized how important a component haptics interfaces are for this field, but existing applications are often very coarse/low resolution compared to ongoing work within INTUITIVE. INTUITIVE is also a deeptech project, because the project’s work towards an understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying human perception is a key to design new and more intuitive user interfaces, for example for metaverse applications. The haptics technology also paves the ground for ground-breaking development in robotics, where haptics can be considered a key for autonomous intelligent system to learn to understand the mechanics of the physical world, an essential component for example for human-robot interactions and for higher general intelligence in robots.