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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
European Initiatives
FP7 & H2020 Projects
HAPPINESS
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Title: HAptic Printed Patterned INtErfaces for Sensitive Surface
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The Automotive HMI (Human Machine Interface) will soon undergo dramatic changes, with large plastic dashboards moving from the ‘push-buttons’ era to the ‘tactile’ era. User demand for aesthetically pleasing and seamless interfaces is ever increasing, with touch sensitive interfaces now commonplace. However, these touch interfaces come at the cost of haptic feedback, which raises concerns regarding the safety of eyeless interaction during driving. The HAPPINESS project intends to address these concerns through technological solutions, introducing new capabilities for haptic feedback on these interfaces. The main goal of the HAPPINESS project is to develop a smart conformable surface able to offer different tactile sensations via the development of a Haptic Thin and Organic Large Area Electronic technology (TOLAE), integrating sensing and feedback capabilities, focusing on user requirements and ergonomic designs. To this aim, by gathering all the value chain actors (materials, technology manufacturing, OEM integrator) for application within the automotive market, the HAPPINESS project will offer a new haptic Human-Machine Interface technology, integrating touch sensing and disruptive feedback capabilities directly into an automotive dashboard. Based on the consortium skills, the HAPPINESS project will demonstrate the integration of Electro-Active Polymers (EAP) in a matrix of mechanical actuators on plastic foils. The objectives are to fabricate these actuators with large area and cost effective printing technologies and to integrate them through plastic molding injection into a small-scale dashboard prototype. We will design, implement and evaluate new approaches to Human-Computer Interaction on a fully functional prototype that combines in packaging both sensors and actuator foils, driven by custom electronics, and accessible to end-users via software libraries, allowing for the reproduction of common and accepted sensations such as Roughness, Vibration and Relief. In this project, the role of Hybrid team is to design user studies on tactile perception, and study innovative usages of the technologies developed in HAPPINESS.
IMAGINE
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Title: IMAGINE - Robots Understanding Their Actions by Imagining Their Effects
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Today's robots are good at executing programmed motions, but they do not understand their actions in the sense that they could automatically generalize them to novel situations or recover from failures. IMAGINE seeks to enable robots to understand the structure of their environment and how it is affected by its actions. “Understanding” here means the ability of the robot (a) to determine the applicability of an action along with parameters to achieve the desired effect, and (b) to discern to what extent an action succeeded, and to infer possible causes of failure and generate recovery actions. The core functional element is a generative model based on an association engine and a physics simulator. “Understanding” is given by the robot's ability to predict the effects of its actions, before and during their execution. This allows the robot to choose actions and parameters based on their simulated performance, and to monitor their progress by comparing observed to simulated behavior. This scientific objective is pursued in the context of recycling of electromechanical appliances. Current recycling practices do not automate disassembly, which exposes humans to hazardous materials, encourages illegal disposal, and creates significant threats to environment and health, often in third countries. IMAGINE will develop a TRL-5 prototype that can autonomously disassemble prototypical classes of devices, generate and execute disassembly actions for unseen instances of similar devices, and recover from certain failures. For robotic disassembly, IMAGINE will develop a multi-functional gripper capable of multiple types of manipulation without tool changes. IMAGINE raises the ability level of robotic systems in core areas of the work programme, including adaptability, manipulation, perception, decisional autonomy, and cognitive ability. Since only one-third of EU e-waste is currently recovered, IMAGINE addresses an area of high economical and ecological impact.