Modern robotic applications involve close contact to the human and consequently, require apart from performance a high degree of safety from their actuators. Further, the dexterous manipulation abilities of a human are not yet inherently realized by technical media. In this work a novel piezohydraulic actuator is presented aiming at a) high power density, b) human-like force/velocity characteristic, c) intrinsic passive safety and low reflected inertia, and d) high robustness. It is shown why the piezohydraulic actuation principle is appropriate to mimic the behavior of a human muscle and, as a consequence, desirable for robotic applications. A model of the actuator is also presented together with simulation and experimental results.

In this video we present a teleoperation system which is capable of solving complex tasks in human-sized wide area environments. The system consists of two mobile teleoperators controlled by two operators, and offers haptic, visual, and auditory feedback. The task examined here, consists of repairing a robot by removing a computer and replacing a defective hard-drive. To cope with the complexity of such a task, we go beyond classical teleoperation by integrating several advanced software algorithms into the system.

Audiovisual communications is at the core of multimedia systems that allow users to interact across distances. It is common understanding that both audio and video are required for high-quality interaction. While audiovisual information provides a user with a satisfactory impression of being present in a remote environment, physical interaction and manipulation is not supported. True immersion into a distant environment and efficient distributed collaboration require the ability to physically interact with remote objects and to literally get in touch with other people. Touching and manipulating objects remotely becomes possible if we augment traditional audiovisual communications by the haptic modality. Haptic communications is a relatively young field of research that has the potential to substantially improve human-human and human-machine interaction. In this paper, we discuss the state-of-the-art in haptic communications both from psychophysical and technical points of view. From a human perception point of view, we mainly focus on the multimodal integration of video and haptics and the improved performance that can be achieved when combining them. We also discuss how the human adapts to discrepancies and synchronization errors between different modalities, a research area which is typically referred to as perceptual learning. From a technical perspective, we address perceptual coding of haptic information and the transmission of haptic data streams over resource-constrained and potentially lossy networks in the presence of unpredictable and time-varying communication delays. In this context, we also discuss the need for objective quality metrics for haptic communication. Throughout the paper, we stress the fact that haptic communications is not meant as a replacement of traditional audiovisual communications but rather as an additional dimension for telepresence that will allow us to advance in our quest for truly immersive communication.

Telesurgery systems integrate multimodal communication and robotic technologies to enable surgical procedures to be performed from remote locations. They allow human surgeons to intuitively control laparoscopic instruments and to navigate within the human body. In this paper, we present selected topics on multimodal interaction in the context of telesurgery applications. These are results from the collaborative research project SFB 453 on ldquoHigh-Fidelity Telepresence and Teleactionrdquo which is funded by the German Research Foundation in the larger Munich area. The focus in this paper is on multimodal information processing and communication including simulation of surgical targets in the human body. Furthermore, we present an overview of our advanced multimodal telesurgery demonstrators that provide a comprehensive platform for our collaborative telepresence research.

A novel educational environment for kids with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), namely NOESIS, is presented in this paper. NOESIS takes into account ASD kidspsila individual characteristics (level of autism, source sensitivity, reaction target, etc), their emotional state (stress level, hyper-/hypo-tension) during their educational procedure, and creativity during guided- and self-activity (e.g., gaming). It adapts to each kidpsilas specific characteristics through system adaptation and self-regulation procedures. Moreover, it provides assistance to the educator for preparation, customization and optimization of the educational material for each kid and provision of enhanced evaluation procedures (scores/tools) via well-managed Web services. Parentspsila updating is also provided via reporting material with learning curve descriptions. Overall, NOESIS contributes to the provision of opportunities to all ASD children to be educated by facilitating access and tuning innovative technology to social needs.