News

We showcased our IISYest Baker solution at the Hannover Messe 2024 as one of the three finalists at the KUKA Innovation Award!

The team, Collaborative Deliciousness is formed by students and researchers of the University of Waterloo Faculty of Engineering. The development of the solution was strongly supported by the RoboHub, which hosted the robot and arranged all the logistics.

The team's solution for the KUKA Innovation Award 2024 is the IISYest Baker - a robotic solution that revolutionizes craft bakeries by enabling human-robot collaboration, answering to this year's theme "Robots for the People". 

This innovative system allows bakers to seamlessly and safely integrate baking processes, enabling the robot to assist in creating artisanal-grade pastries. As the perfect helper in a bakery setting, the IISYest baker merges traditional techniques with modern technology, ensuring precision and efficiency in every batch of pastries it produces.

Prof. Yue Hu participated together with team members Cheng Tang (2nd-year undergraduate student in Computer Engineering), and Jeffrey Lee (first-year MASc student in Mechatronics Engineering). This was the first time that the University of Waterloo was selected as a finalist in this prestigious international competition.

Our paper on active physical human-robot interaction, which resulted from collaborations between social science and robotics, was finally published in the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction! Thanks to Dr. Naoko Abe for her efforts in authoring this paper.

Check the paper here: Human Understanding and Perception of Unanticipated Robot Action in the Context of Physical Interaction

We welcome many new members this term!

• PhDs: Hisham Khalil, Ibrahim Abdulhafiz, JaeEun Shin
• URAs: Abhi Gupta, Khushi Savla, Shawn Yang
• Undergraduate volunteer: Iris Zhang

We had two papers presented this week at the International Conference on Social Robotics in Doha, Qatar:

#1 "RoboSync: Efficient Real-Time Operating System for Social Robots with Customizable Behaviour", C. Tang, Y. Feng, Y. Hu, in the "Non-verbal Interaction with Social Robots" session.

#2 "The Impact of Robots’ Facial Emotional Expressions on Light Physical Exercises", N. Abdulazeem, Y. Hu, in the "Emotions" session.

Congratulations to Nourhan's paper receiving the Best Student Paper Award!!!

We have three new publications!

International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) accepted papers for presentation in Doha, Qatar:

- "The Impact of Robots’ Facial Emotional Expressions on Light Physical Exercises", Nourhan Abudlazeem, Yue Hu.

- "RoboSync: Efficient Real-Time Operating System for Social Robots with Customizable Behaviour", Cheng Tang, Yijing Feng, Yue Hu.

Congratulations to Nourhan and Cheng for this achievement!

Review paper published on T-RO:

- "Optimization-Based Control for Dynamic Legged Robots", Patrick M Wensing, Michael Posa, Yue Hu, Adrien Escande, Nicolas Mansard, Andrea Del Prete.

Nourhan's review paper titled "Human Factors Considerations for Quantifiable Human States in Physical Human-Robot Interaction: A Literature Review" has been accepted and is now published in the Special Issue "Robotic Contact with the Human Body in Physical Human–Robot Interaction" on MDPI Sensors. Congratulations Nourhan!

Together with members of the HCRMI and the RoboHub, we were selected as one of the three finalists of the KUKA Innovation Award 2024!
We are team Collaborative Deliciousness. Our innovation, "The IISYest baker," reimagines artisanal bakeries. It's an intuitive and user-friendly automated solution designed for simplicity. Bakers will be able to replace repetitive manual tasks effortlessly. Our aim is to maintain the exceptional quality artisan bakers deliver, while seamlessly integrating into various craft bakery setups.

The finalists will be presenting the solution at the Hannover Messe 2024 in Germany to adjudicate the final prize.

Nourhan's review paper titled "Human Factors Considerations for Quantifiable Human States in Physical Human-Robot Interaction: A Literature Review" was successfully submitted for publication in the Special Issue "Robotic Contact with the Human Body in Physical Human–Robot Interaction" on MDPI Sensors. You can read the preprint here: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202306.0131/v1

Welcome to our new members: Amr Hamdi (MASc - co-supervised with Kerstin Dautenhahn), Anas Mahdi (PhD - co-supervised with Katja Mombaur), Devyani Gorkar (Mitacs Globalink Intern), Rijin Muralidharan (URA), and a returning member Saawan Patel (URA).

Yue gave a talk "Active human-robot interaction: what and how", during her visit to the Artificial Mechanical Intelligence (AMI) Research Line at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). Check the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9a00qXDv0 

A.I.R.Lab was at the first UW Robotics Day, with Yue presenting the lab's projects, and Victoria and Geoffrey presenting posters on their thesis work.

Yue is invited to give a talk at the First Latin American Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (LACIAM2023) in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, at the session "Mathematical Foundation of Robot Control". Where she presented "Model-based optimization for legged robots: an overview", based on the survey paper "Optimization-Based Control for Dynamic Legged Robots" that was recently submitted to Transaction on Robotics (T-RO), co-authored by Patrick M Wensing, Michael Posa, Yue Hu, Adrien Escande, Nicolas Mansard, and Andrea Del Prete, you can find the preprint on Arxiv arXiv:2211.11644.

The IEEE-RAS Technical Committe on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics, of which Prof. Hu is a co-chair, is organizing a series of seminar Talks on Model-based Optimization and Optimal Control. They are recorded and available on the YouTube Channel of the TC.  Stay tuned for the upcoming talks by following their Twitter account or their website!

Prof. Hu and Prof. Mombaur are co-organizing the workshop "Advanced in Close-Proximity Human-Robot Collaboration" at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robotics in Okinawa, Japan! Check the website.

We are organizing a robotics hackathon for young women! The RoboArt Hackathon event is taking place Nov. 4 - 6! if you are interested in robotics and don't know where to start, this is the perfect venue! You will work in teams on a robotic project on a 3 days hackathon journey. For registration and more details, check the website!

Exciting to welcome many new students to the lab this Fall term! We have a new graduate student - Geoffrey Hanks, joining us from UBC; two co-op USRA students Aimen Awan and Kavee Thurairajah, one URA Jeffrey Lee, and two undergraduate volunteer students Cheng Tang and Elin Liu! Looking forward to seeing everyone's research developments this term and beyond.

The video of the Panel discussion "AI in Robotics, Manufacturing, and Media How Good Practices Can Shape the Future" at MLOps World - Machine Learning in Production in Toronto, in which Prof. Yue Hu was a panelist, is live online: click here to watch it. This event was part of activities of Women in AI & Robotics.