Outline and Objectives

Recent advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled assistive robots to realize many activities alongside and with humans in shared environments. This physical proximity has introduced novel, complex tasks for the robotics community to address, which can be clustered into three main areas: (i) personal care robots that facilitate humans in physical activities of daily living (ADLs), such as dressing, washing, and feeding, among other personal care tasks through pHRI, (ii) service robots that can perform manipulation tasks for and with humans (doing mobilization and rehabilitation exercises but also handling objects), (iii) physical support robots that provide partial body weight support (BWS) and assist and guide the humans during stance, walking, and other activities (sitting, standing, bending, among other physical-support-based tasks.).

However, despite their potential to transform healthcare and clear beneficial societal impact, such technologies still need to face several unresolved challenges to become part of our everyday lives, including:

• Human Modeling and Assessment: definition of models for online and non-invasive monitoring of the human physical and cognitive state and impairments;
• Assistive Hardware: design of versatile and reconfigurable interfaces and devices that exploit (do not avoid) physical contact for seamless interaction;
• Personalized learning and interaction: developing techniques for learning and adapting robot behavior to individual intentions, actions, and preferences.

This workshop will explore these emerging user-centric tools, particularly focusing on individualized models, adaptive control and planning algorithms, customizable designs and robotic interfaces, and human-informed online learning and optimization techniques.

A prominent theme throughout the workshop is interdisciplinary collaboration, connecting the expertise of engineers, academics, occupational experts, and industry partners. We aim to provide a platform for fruitful discussion, inspiring new perspectives and pathways for the community to successfully design and integrate individualized service, care, and physical assistive robots into society.

Invited Speakers

Dr. Sascha Wischniewski

Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Germany.

Email: wischniewski.sascha@baua.bund.de

Dr. Patricia Rosen

Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Germany.

Email: rosen.patricia@baua.bund.de

Dr. Seunghoon Hwang

Arizona State University (ASU), US.

Email: shwang45@asu.edu

Prof. Ana Luisa Trejos

Western Engineering, US.

Email: atrejos@uwo.ca

Prof. Jee-Hwan Ryu

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea.

Email: jhryu@kaist.ac.kr

Prof. Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee

Cornell University, US.

Email: tapomayukh@cornell.edu

Organizers

Dr. Marta Lorenzini

is a Senior Technician at the Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction (HRII) lab at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in the Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering from Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy in 2014, 2016, and 2020, respectively. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the HRII Lab, IIT from 2020 to 2023. She is currently involved in the ERC project Ergo-Lean, the National INAIL BRiC grant LABORIUS, the INAIL VIVA project, and is also active in technology transfer initiatives with several industrial partners, the JOiiNT lab at Kilometro Rosso Innovation District and Leonardo Labs. She previously contributed to the EU Horizon-2020 project SOPHIA and the EU-FP7 STREP ICT CoDyCo. She was the winner of the Solution Award 2019 (Premio Innovazione Robotica at MECSPE2019), the KUKA Innovation Award 2018, and the IEEE Italy Section 2021 Ph.D. Thesis Award by ABB - New Challenges for Energy and Industry. She is currently the chair of the IEEE RAS Young Reviewers Program. Her research interests include human ergonomics estimation and assessment, assistive robotics, physical human-robot interaction, and feedback interfaces.

Email: marta.lorenzini@iit.it

Dr. Juan M. Gandarias

is an Assistant Professor in the Robotics and Mechatronics Group, Systems Engineering and Automation Department, University of Malaga, Spain. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechatronics from the University of Malaga in 2015, 2017, and 2020, respectively. He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Human-Robot Interfaces and  Interaction Lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy from 2020 to 2023. He was involved in the Horizon-2020 project SOPHIA and the ERC project Ergo-Lean. He has contributed to several Spanish and European projects related to search-and-rescue, physical robotic assistance, and human-robot collaboration in Industrial environments. He has served as a reviewer for high-impact journals and conferences such as IEEE RAM, RA-L, ICRA, IROS, ToH, etc. His research interests include HRC, human modeling, and haptic perception.

Email: jmgandarias@uma.es

Prof. Wansoo Kim

is an Assistant Professor with the Robotics Department, Hanyang University ERICA, Republic of Korea. He received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Hanyang University ERICA campus, Korea in 2008 and his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Hanyang University, Korea in 2015 (Integrated MS/Ph.D. program). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy from 2016 to 2021. He has developed several exoskeleton systems and collaborative robots (Cobot) and conducted research on the control of the powered exoskeleton robot and ergonomics collaboration control with Cobot through the physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) knowledge. He was involved in a Horizon-2020 project SOPHIA (No. 871237) and a European Research Council project Ergo-lean (No. 850932). He has contributed to several projects in the field of exoskeleton robots in Korean projects (Development of Wearable Robot for Industrial Labor Support, etc.) He was the winner of the Solution Award 2019, the winner of KUKA Innovation Award 2018, the HYU Best Ph.D. paper award 2015, and the ICCAS best presentation award 2014. His research interests are in Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), human-robot collaboration, Shared Control, Ergonomics, Human modeling, Feedback devices, and powered exoskeleton robot.

Email: wansookim@hanyang.ac.kr

Dr. Luis Figueredo

is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Brasilia, Brazil, where he was awarded the Best Ph.D. Thesis and received multiple awards for robot demonstrations at IROS and ICAPS during his research period at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For his pioneering work on biomechanics-aware manipulation planning, he also received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to conduct his research at Leeds. During this period, he developed open-source AI tools acknowledged by the EU Innovation Radar and organized the 3rd UK Robot Manipulation Workshop at Leeds. Dr. Figueredo is also marked by leadership roles in large-scale projects like the Geriatronics Lighthouse Initiative at TUM. For his achievements, he was recognized as the first Associated Fellow at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). With a robust interdisciplinary background, Dr. Figueredo has contributed significantly to the fields of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), biomechanics-aware manipulation, NLPs grounded in manipulation constraints, cooperative robotics, and geometric methods and control for robotics.

Email: figueredo@ieee.org

Dr. Marta Lagomarsino

is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction (HRII) Laboratory of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. She completed her PhD in 2023, obtaining the diploma cum Laude from the Electronic Information and Bioengineering Department of Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the HRII lab. She received her Master's Degree in Robotics Engineering in 2020 and her Bachelor's Degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2018, both with honours from the University of Genoa. She spent a semester at the University of Twente (Enschede, Netherlands), and her Master's thesis project was awarded by GNB and UBCM di Roma. During her PhD, she was honoured as the Most Promising Researcher in Robotics and AI at the RomeCup2023. She is currently involved in the ERC project Ergo-Lean, the National INAIL BRIC grant CoRoMan, the INAIL VIVA project, and technology transfer initiatives with industrial partners. She previously contributed to the Horizon-2020 project SOPHIA. Her research interests include human cognitive ergonomics estimation and assessment, physical human-robot interaction, and mutual human-robot adaptation.

Email: marta.lagomarsino@iit.it

Dr. Sebastian Hjorth

is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction (HRII) lab at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). He received his B.Sc. in Robotics, M.Sc. in Control and Automation, and his Ph.D. from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark in 2017, 2019, and 2023, respectively. His research interests include physical human-robot interaction, energy-aware impedance control strategies, and power-based control approaches for exoskeletons.

Email: sebastian.hjorth@iit.it

Prof. Mahdi Tavakoli

is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Alberta, Canada. He received his BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering from Ferdowsi University and K.N. Toosi University, Iran, in 1996 and 1999, respectively. He received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 2005. In 2006, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR), Canada. In 2007-2008, he was an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University, USA. Dr. Tavakoli’s research interests broadly involve the areas of robotics and systems control. Specifically, his research focuses on haptics and teleoperation control, medical robotics, and image-guided surgery. Dr. Tavakoli is the lead author of Haptics for Teleoperated Surgical Robotic Systems (World Scientific, 2008). He is a Senior Member of IEEE and an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Journal of Medical Robotics Research, IET Control Theory & Applications, and Mechatronics.

Email: mahdi.tavakoli@ualberta.ca