Welcome to an afternoon of international guest lectures by eminent professors in neuroengineering and robotics: prof. Gionata Salvietti, prof. Strahinja Dosen, and prof. Alessandro Del Vecchio. They will give half an hour talk each followed by Q&A.
Overview
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- Date:Starts 30 January 2026, 14:30Ends 30 January 2026, 17:00
- Language:English
- Gionata Salvietti is an Associate Professor of Robotics and Automation at the University of Siena and an Affiliate Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. His research focuses on collaborative and assistive robotics, as well as haptic interfaces. He has been a Visiting Researcher at DLR and the University of Hamburg and has contributed to projects on assistive and collaborative robotic and haptic-enhanced e-learning. He serves as an Associate Editor for leading robotics journals and has authored over 100 scientific publications.
Enhancing Human Capabilities: Haptic Interfaces and Sensorimotor Integration for Robotics
Haptic technology is revolutionizing the way humans interact with machines, enabling seamless sensorimotor augmentation and intuitive robot control. In this talk, we will explore the potential of wearable haptic interfaces and sensorimotor systems that allow users to control robots as natural extensions of their bodies. Additionally, we will introduce a novel methodology to assess human trust in robots using the Hand Blink Reflex (HBR), providing new insights into human-robot interaction. By bridging neuroscience, robotics, and haptics, we aim to uncover new frontiers in enhancing human capabilities through technology.
- Strahinja Dosen received the Diploma of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and the M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2000 and 2004, respectively, from the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and the Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction, Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2009. From 2011 to 2017, he worked as a Research Scientist at the Institute for Neurorehabilitation Systems, University Medical Center Gottingen, Germany, and then as an Associate Professor at the Department of Health Science and Technology (HST), Aalborg University (AAU). Currently, he is a Full Professor in the same Department and leads a research group on Neurorehabilitation Systems. Prof. Dosen was a principal investigator for AAU and HST in several EU (Tactility, Wearplex, Sixthsense, and SimBionics) and nationally funded (Robin, Remap, Climb, NeuroMate) projects. He published more than 130 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, and his main research interest is the closed-loop control of assistive robotic systems.
Non-invasive biomimetic artificial sensory feedback for upper limb prostheses
The control methods for robotic prosthetic limbs have significantly advanced and matured, and commercial prostheses can be intuitively controlled using machine learning. However, the restoration of sensory feedback is lagging behind, even though it is well-established that sensory input is crucial for human movement planning and execution. In this lecture, we will start by exploring the reasons behind the gap between the many promising studies in the literature and their lack of clinical translation. We will then present our approach to designing an effective feedback interface. Our main assumption is that developing a successful feedback solution requires a deep understanding of human motor control, particularly in the context of prosthesis use. We will demonstrate how this knowledge can be translated into a compact technical implementation integrated into a prosthesis socket and tested both in the lab and at home over an extended period. The results of these clinical and home-based assessments will be presented, and the lecture will conclude with a look toward future developments. - Alessandro Del Vecchio is a neuroscientist and full professor of AI in Biomedical Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. His research focuses on the neural control of muscles, neural interfacing, and machine learning applications. His work primarily focuses on motor unit physiology and neuroengineering applications in health and disease.
Spiking behaviour of human motor neuron pools in health and paralysis
The talk will begin with novel data from pools of human motor units recorded with microelectrode arrays implanted in intrinsic hand and leg muscles during varied behaviours. In the second part, the speaker will introduce novel AI methods for decoding motor function and motor unit firing times in individuals who have suffered neural lesions resulting in complete loss of hand function.