The goal of this project is twofold: 

At BRML, we are interested in modelling human arm stiffness, that is: if I apply a force to your arm, with what force does your arm react? Apart from determining this stiffness through perturbation measurements, we can use EMG measurements to obtain a relatively accurate measurement of this impedance---given a model of the EMG-stiffness relationship.

In the Telepresence group we would like to actively control the stiffness of a slave robot according to what is commanded in the master device, in a "natural" way. The teleoperation system can be seen as "tool" which links the human hand to an unaccessible environment. This tool allows the operator to manipulate that environment from a safe and accessible location. The operator is presented with visual and haptic data from the environment such that she feels immersed in it. By measuring the human stiffness it is possible to modulate the characteristics of this tool, resulting in better immersion feeling and therefore better performance.   

work breakdown

• literature analysis

• building the setup (hardware and software, largely it is already there)
• designing the system: data gathering, estimation of the map, prediction in a toy situation
• designing and performing the experiment 
• analysis of the data

prerequisites

• knowledge of machine learning
• good knowledge of matlab
• familiarity with teleoperation / telepresence is desirable

beginning and duration

start as soon as possible, duration minimum 6 months. You will be supervised by Jordi Artigas and Claudio Castellini.