The intelligence of touch

October 1st, full day workshop
a satellite event of IROS 2018, Madrid, Spain
Madrid Municipal Conference Centre, room 4.R.5 “Varsovia”

The programme

The invited speakers

The demos

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The sense of touch is a wonderful capability through which human beings communicate in ways that are simply unimaginable using sight or hearing.

Through touch we explore the world, we socialize, we define our own self and separate it from whatever is not us.

Due to the incredibly high number of touch receptors human beings are endowed with, the interpretation of touch signals is a fascinating research topic. Moreover, building machines with something comparable is a formidable challenge. Researchers are devising touch sensors which more and more resemble the capabilities of human touch, at least functionally.

But how to exploit this extraordinary flow of information?

This workshop revolves around three “levels” of touch information processing:

• the syntax of touch what kind of information is conveyed? How? What information goes beyond function, e.g., affective touch?
• the concrete semantics of touch touch-based object detection and recognition, intent detection, haptic exploration; and
• the abstract semantics of touch what feelings does touch elicit, how, and how is this relevant to robotics and human-robotic interaction especially?

Check out our invited speakers, as well as the demos which will be presented at the workshop!