Epidermal systems and virtual reality: Emerging disruptive technology for military applications

This review study, presented at the 2nd World Conference on Advanced Materials for Defense (AuxDefense 2020), focuses on skin as sensory interface and explores the latest discoveries in bioelectronic science. The work analyzes at what extent invisibility is possible by emulating nature, and if military applications can really benefit from technology that combines epidermal systems and virtual reality — and from next generation of wearable textile computing technologies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Epidermal systems and virtual reality: Emerging disruptive technology for military applications

This review study, presented at the 2nd World Conference on Advanced Materials for Defense (AuxDefense 2020), focuses on skin as sensory interface and explores the latest discoveries in bioelectronic science. The work analyzes at what extent invisibility is possible by emulating nature, and if military applications can really benefit from technology that combines epidermal systems and virtual reality — and from next generation of wearable textile computing technologies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Data for benchmarking low-cost, 3D printed prosthetic hands

In this article, three different data sets are presented to evaluate a representative of openly accessible 3D printed prosthetic hand. The first data set includes grasping force measurements of human hand and low-cost 3D printed hand. Three grasping functions were evaluated, spherical, cylindrical, and precision grasps. The experimental test was performed using a wearable tactile sensor. The second data set includes the numerical analysis of prosthetic fingers made from Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polylactic Acid (PLA) materials under different carrying loads. The numerical analyses were carried out by LS-DYNA software. The files can be used for the prosthetic fingers’ evaluation and for the selection of suitable material. The third data set includes the experimental tensile test of ABS and PLA materials. The mechanical properties were calculated from the results, which can be used in the design and fabrication of products from these materials. All the datasets are available from Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GCPAIL.The work is supported by an internal QUCG grant from Qatar University under the grant No. QUCG-CENG-2018/2019-3 . The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors

Evaluation of the Handshake Turing Test for anthropomorphic Robots

Handshakes are fundamental and common greeting and parting gestures among humans. They are important in shaping first impressions as people tend to associate character traits with a person's handshake. To widen the social acceptability of robots and make a lasting first impression, a good handshaking ability is an important skill for social robots. Therefore, to test the human-likeness of a robot handshake, we propose an initial Turing-like test, primarily for the hardware interface to future AI agents. We evaluate the test on an android robot's hand to determine if it can pass for a human hand. This is an important aspect of Turing tests for motor intelligence where humans have to interact with a physical device rather than a virtual one. We also propose some modifications to the definition of a Turing test for such scenarios taking into account that a human needs to interact with a physical medium.Comment: Accepted as a Late Breaking Report in The 15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI) 202

The scale of sense : spatial extent and multimodal urban design

This paper is derived from the work of the UK AHRC/EPSRC 'Designing for the 21st Century' research project Multimodal Representation of Urban Space. This research group seeks to establish a new form of notation for urban design which pays attention to our entire sensory experience of place. This paper addresses one of the most important aspects of this endeavour: scale. Scale is of course a familiar abstraction to all architects and urban designers, allowing for representations tailored to different levels of detail and allowing drawings to be translated into build structures. Scale is also a factor in human experience: the spatial extent of each of our senses is different. Many forms of architectonic representation are founded upon the extension of the visual modality, and designs are accordingly tuned towards this sense. We can all speak from our own experience, however, that urban environments are a feast for all the senses. The visceral quality of walking down a wide tree-lined boulevard differs greatly from the subterranean crowds of the subway, or the meandering pause invited by the city square. Similarly, our experience of hearing and listening is more than just a passive observation by virtue of our own power of voice and the feedback created by our percussive movements across a surface or through a medium. Taste and smell are also excited by the urban environment, the social importance of food preparation and the associations between smell and public health are issues of sensory experience. The tactile experience of space, felt with the entire body as well as our more sensitive hands, allowing for direct manipulation and interactions as well as sensations of mass, heat, proximity and texture. Our project team shall present a series of tools for designers which explore the variety of sensory modalities and their associated scales. This suite of notations and analytical frameworks turn our attention to the sensory experience of places, and offers a method and pattern book for more holistic multi-sensory and multi-modal urban design

The power of affective touch within social robotics

There have been many leaps and bounds within social robotics, especially within human-robot interaction and how to make it a more meaningful relationship. This is traditionally accomplished through communicating via vision and sound. It has been shown that humans naturally seek interaction through touch yet the implications on emotions is unknown both in human-human interaction and social human-robot interaction. This thesis unpacks the social robotics community and the research undertaken to show a significant gap in the use of touch as a form of communication. The meaning behind touch will be investigated and what implication it has on emotions. A simplistic prototype was developed focusing on texture and breathing. This was used to carry out experiments to find out which combination of texture and movement felt natural. This proved to be a combination of synthetic fur and 14 breaths per minute. For human’s touch is said to be the most natural way of communicating emotions, this is the first step in achieving successful human-robot interaction in a more natural human-like way

Katherine Mansfield and anima mundi

This presentation proposes a reading of Katherine Mansfield’s work that will begin with the medieval theories of anima mundi or world soul, the concept of an animistic universe in which the earth can be revivified through a spiritus mundi. It will refer to the French theological scholars of the 12th century who were influential in promoting the Pythagoraean-Platonic doctrine of anima mundi through allegories of ‘Dame Nature’: Bernard de Sylvestris of Tours (De Universitate Mundi) and Alanus of Insulis (De Planctu Naturae and Anticlaudianus), Jean de Meun’s continuation of Guillaume de Lorris’s Le Roman de la Rose. This strand of medieval culture and cosmology - often considered as tangential to mainstream European intellectual and Christian religious belief — was popular throughout the Renaissance and has survived in various literary forms in modernist writing, often as a vigorous rebuttal of modernization from an environmental perspective. Although no direct connection with the anima mundi tradition can be traced in Mansfield’s work, her close identification with nature and the non-human is undeniable, and some familiarity with popular survivals of the tradition of nature personified appear, for example, in her interest in the Greek god, Pan. Her creation of transitive, linking relations between herself and the natural world recalls the close participation between man and the rest of creation characteristic of the medieval world view. Certainly anthropomorphic thinking and the perception of human subjectivity as rooted in non-human nature underpin the sense of wonder and the marvellous found in her representations of the created world and her emphasis on its mystery and splendour. This Arcadian, pastoral orientation also appears in her empathy with living creatures, flowers, plants and trees, while cultivated gardens and wild outdoor spaces are settings for epiphanies, sites of revelation and transformation. Yet, I will argue, Mansfield also introduced her own modernist, gendered critique of the tropes and images associated with nature worship. The talk will refer to the traditions associated with anima mundi in relation to stories like ‘Epilogue II’, ‘In the Botanical Gardens’, ‘The Escape’, ‘See-Saw’ and ‘Prelude’, read as modernist adaptations of classical/medieval topoi of the locus amoenus (pleasant place), the hortus conclusus (enclosed garden), and the sacred tree