Reconfigurable eel-like robot with electric sense

A robot which swims like an eel is the main attraction at the ANGELS stand. The prototype is made up of nine modules with propellers which can be operated independently or joined together. The robot is equipped with an electrolocation sensor which enables it to avoid obstacles and walls, and to distinguish the basic shape of objects.

Web links

www.theangelsproject.eu

Contact: Dr Alexis Girin

Primary affiliation: Ecole des Mines de Nantes
City: Nantes
Country: France
Web Site: www.mines-nantes.fr

Stand: 9

Learning about pervasive adaptation through art and music

Fancy yourself as the next Jackson Pollock? Want to find out how music - from Mozart to Meatloaf - can affect your mood? These are just two of the interactive games, videos and interactive displays on show to demonstrate concepts embodied in pervasive adaptation, which refers to the ability of information and communication systems to adapt autonomously to dynamic user contexts. Artificial multi-robot organisms consisting of a swarm of robots, which can dock with each other and share energy and computational resources within a single artificial-life-form, will be demonstrated.

Web links

www.perada.eu
www.funinnumbers.eu/

Contact: Ms Jennifer Willies

Primary affiliation: PerAda Project Manager
City: Edinburgh
Country: United Kingdom
Web Site: www.perada.eu

Stand: 28

Shed your skin – introducing ECCEROBOT

Shake hands with ECCEROBOT, a radically new kind of robot with a spectacular appearance. ECCEROBOT looks like a life-size human with the skin peeled off so that the bones, muscles, and tendons can be seen in motion. The stereotype of the robot is usually either dangerous or fragile. This exhibit attempts to move beyond this mindset, and this mindset must be overcome.

Web links

eccerobot.org

Contact: Professor Owen Holland

Primary affiliation: University of Sussex
Position: Professor of Cognitive Robotics
Country: United Kingdom
Web Site: www.sussex.ac.uk

Stand: 15

Climbing, flying and getting the job done: Meet a new generation of swarmanoids

See robots fly, climb and wheel themselves around as they get on with their work. Or even set them an individual or collective task by writing a simple program. The exhibit aims to show how biologically inspired principles of swarm intelligence can be applied to robotics.

Web links

www.swarmanoid.org/
www.swarm-bots.org/

Contact: Professor Marco Dorigo

Primary affiliation: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Position: Professor
City: Brussels
Country: Belgium
Web Site: iridia.ulb.ac.be

Stand: 18

Shaking, rattling and rolling: Alternative energy sources for wireless ICT devices

Come and see how the vibrations from a car's engine, passenger compartment and shock absorbers can be harvested into electricity. Watch an animation which describes the science behind the “non-linear bistable energy harvester” that converts shaking, rattling and rolling into energy, and estimates how much energy can be produced. Or download an iPhone app which shows how much energy that you could generate just by giving your phone a shake.

Web links

www.wisepower.it
www.nanopwr.eu
www.zero-power.eu

Contact: Prof Luca Gammaitoni

Primary affiliation: NiPS Laboratory, Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Perugia
Position: Director of Noise in Physical System Laboratory, University of Perugia
City: Perugia
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.nipslab.org

Stand: 17

Shrewbot is the cat's whiskers

Meet ShrewBot and his friends, a group of robots inspired by the sensory systems of animals with whiskers. Robots equipped with vibrissal sensors are designed to operate in places in which more conventional sensors fail, like smoke or dust-filled environments or in murky water. Visitors can also watch videos of animals using their whiskers to explore their environments.

Web links

www.biotact.org/
www.brl.ac.uk/projects/neuro/index.html

Contact: Professor Tony Prescott

Primary affiliation: University of Sheffield
Position: Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
City: Sheffield
Country: United Kingdom
Web Site: www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/research/groups/atlas

Stand: 22

Think it and it's done

Why not try out a brain computer interface for yourself? Four prototype applications are on show – you can write text using a mentally operated virtual keyboard, select pictures from a collection simply by focusing your attention on the desired picture, send a mental command to a functional electrical stimulation (FES) system that can deliver currents to forearm nerves to regain control of your hand for grasping, and control a small mobile robot designed for telepresence.

Web links

cnbi.epfl.ch
cnbi.epfl.ch/webdav/site/cnbi/shared/multimedia/EPFL_Wheelchair_LearningCenter.flv

Contact: Prof. Jose del R. Millan

Primary affiliation: EPFL
Position: Prof.
City: Lausanne
Country: Switzerland
Web Site: cnbi.epfl.ch

Stand: 1

Getting to grips with graphene

Why not get to grips with graphene - the new shooting star of ICT. Visitors can touch and examine prototypes of transparent wafers coated by graphene and test its electrical conductivity. They can also test the protective nature of graphene by putting copper foils coated by a graphene layer on a hot-plate and observing the result.

Web links

www.grand-project.eu

Contact: Dr. Daniel Neumaier

Primary affiliation: AMO GmbH
Position: Head of Carbon-Electronics Group
City: Aachen
Country: Germany
Web Site: www.amo.de

Stand: 21

Swimming bio-inspired artefacts with 3D vision

Watch bio-inspired artefacts swimming in a small pool. The artefacts will move in a real adaptive way as a sort of natural "resonant" system, in which mechanical properties of skeletal apparatus and actuators stabilize the system during locomotion. Experimental sessions will be interleaved with presentations describing project relevance and its impact on technology.

Web links

www.lampetra.org

Contact: Eng. Stefano Orofino

Primary affiliation: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Position: PhD Student
City: Pisa
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.sssup.it

Stand: 11

Frontiers of nanoscale, opto- and electro-mechanical technologies

The aim of this exhibit is to promote understanding of the quantum phenomena of micro and nano-mechanical devices that can be harnessed for ICT and QIPC and for ultra-high sensitivity sensors. Visitors to the stand will get a hands-on experience of nanoscale, opto- and electro-mechanical devices at work and have the opportunity to discuss with top scientists in the field who will show-case key research outputs and link them to wider strategies.

Web links

www.minos-fp7.eu/
www.tailphox.org/
www.qnems.eu/home-8.html

Contact: Professor Markus Aspelmeyer

Primary affiliation: University of Vienna, Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Faculty of Physics
Position: Professor of Physics
City: Vienna
Country: Austria
Web Site: vcq.quantum.at

Stand: 20

Come and see a brain-inspired, or neuromorphic computer in action. Visitors will be able to choose from many different network architectures including biologically inspired cortical structures as well as generic concepts like "Liquid Computing". Staff will be on hand to interactively modify network parameters to demonstrate the typical workflow for using these new architectures.

Web links

BrainScaleS.eu
facets.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/largePublic/demonstrator_publishable_20M_20100112_flv/
Brain-i-Nets.eu

Contact: Dr. Björn Kindler

Primary affiliation: Kirchhoff Institut für Physik, Uni Heidelberg
Position: Administrative Project Officer
City: Heidelberg
Country: Germany
Web Site: brainscales.eu

Stand: 14

Watch videos of brain-chip recording sessions made as part of the CyberRat project. CyberRat has developed an innovative interface between a semiconductor chip or an ensemble of chips and the brain of a living rat. Small CMOS chips featuring stimulation and recording sites integrated at high-density are implanted in several brain areas obtaining an unprecedented control of neuronal activity in the rat's brain.

Web links

www.cyberrat.eu

Contact: Dr. Stefano Vassanelli

Primary affiliation: University of Padova
Position: Professor
City: Padova
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.anatomiafisiologia.unipd.it/neurochip/Index.html

Stand: 6

Towards next generation high dexterity soft-bodied robots (the robotic octopus)

Welcome to the aquarium where you can try your hand at operating a robotic octopus, and at the same time gain a greater understanding of the principles of embodied intelligence which when applied to biomimetic soft-robotics technologies make possible the highly dexterous motor capabilities of this robotic octopus.

Web links

www.octopus-project.eu
www.youtube.com/user/octopusPJ

Contact: Professor Cecilia Laschi

Primary affiliation: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Position: Associate Professor of Biorobotics - OCTOPUS IP Coordinator
City: Pisa
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.sssup.it

Stand: 5

Exploring the quantum world of games, diamonds and secure communications

Roll up, roll up for a game of "quantum roulette". A quantum random number generator will be used to draw winning numbers in a roulette game where visitors can play to win small prizes. The game exploits the unique lattice properties of diamond which allows quantum devices to run in ambient conditions. This exhibit will demonstrate a number of other applications which explore the quantum world, and its promise of better performance at smaller scale with less power consumption.

Web links

qurope.eu/quie2t
www.qubitapplications.com/

Contact: Dr Kamna Pruvost

Primary affiliation: Oxford University
Position: Programme Manager and Research Facilitator
City: Oxford
Country: United Kingdom
Web Site: www.ox.ac.uk/

Stand: 19

Meet Acroban, the first humanoid robot that can move around, walk and play with children without losing its balance. Acroban exhibits a range of behaviours that it can combine, and can react intuitively, naturally and creatively to uncontrolled external human intervention. Visitors will be able to see Acroban in action and interact with him.

Web links

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ9xd4sqVx0
flowers.inria.fr/

Contact: Dr. Olivier Ly

Primary affiliation: LABRI / INRIA Flowers
Position: Associate Professor
City: Talence
Country: France
Web Site: flowers.inria.fr/

Stand: 13

Discover for yourself the functionalities of an adaptive networked society of tiny artefacts! The networked society comprises 40 wireless sensor nodes and 3 mobile robots which together form a distributed self-organizing society. Visitors will be able to interact with this society using wireless controllers, a smart phone or a tablet PC

Web links

fronts.cti.gr/fet2011
fronts.cti.gr/
fronts.cti.gr/index.php/home/34-fronts-info/129-fet2011

Contact: Dr Ioannis Chatzigiannakis

Primary affiliation: Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (CTI)
Position: Director of Research Unit 1
City: Rion
Country: Greece
Web Site: ru1.cti.gr

Stand: 27

Towards the synthetic brain (of a pond snail)

Find out how organic memristor was used to fabricate a functional material structure capable of mimicking the associative learning of feeding behaviour in the pond snail. Watch films showing the experimental data on the signal propagation kinetics in basic memristors and their networks, or showing the insurgence of "hebbian" patterns during the training of a complex phase-separated molecular memristor-functionalized gold nanoparticles composite network. Visitors will be shown a preliminary prototype of this adaptive complex network.

Web links

www.fp7-bion.eu
www.fis.unipr.it/lmn

Contact: Dr. Viktor Erokhin

Primary affiliation: University of Parma, Physics Department
Position: Full Professor
City: Parma
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.fis.unipr.it

Stand: 12

The future of biomimetic machines

This exhibit will feature a number of demonstrations showcasing the potential of biomimetic systems to transform the way ICT technologies are developed and deployed in society. On show: the world's first integrated neuroprosthetic device that in tests has successfully replaced a lesioned circuit in a rodent's brain; a biomimentic chemical sensing robot; a wearable device that allows exploration of complex brain data (EEG, ECG, gesture, movement, including eyes, etc.) and a live stream from an ongoing cognitive neuromorphic engineering workshop.

Web links

www.csnetwork.eu/
specs.upf.edu/

Contact: Dr Anna Mura

Primary affiliation: SPECS, Tech. dpt, University Pompeu Fabra
Position: senior research
City: Barcelona
Country: Spain
Web Site: csnetwork.eu/

Stand: 2

Enter the Observatorium and get inside the web

This exhibit experiments on networks built from real-time Internet data, giving participants the feeling they are really “inside” the web and witnessing what is happening right now. The objective is to better understand the processes of knowledge generation and opinion dynamics. Visitors will be invited to enter a dark room where they can interact with a network of news extracted from the on-line press.

Web links

theobservatorium.com/

Contact: Jorge Louçã

Primary affiliation: ISCTE-IUL Lisbon University Institute
Position: Professor
City: Lisbon
Country: Portugal
Web Site: iscte.pt/

Stand: 26

Looking for a search engine to find images or web pages about David Beckham arranged in terms of the various clubs he has played for? This 15 minute demonstration of LivingKnowledge showcases technologies enabling bias-aware, diversity-aware and evolution-aware information access, including diversity-aware search within texts and images, analysis of future predictions as well as fact-and-opinion extraction.

Web links

livingknowledge-project.eu/
auxedit.net/video/

Contact: Vincenzo Maltese

Primary affiliation: DISI - University of Trento
City: Trento
Country: Italy
Web Site: disi.unitn.it/

Stand: 23

ICT goes walkabout: interfacing your shoes with the floor

Slip on a pair of sandals, pop a knapsack on your back and experience the sensation of walking over creaking floorboards, mud or even snow without leaving the exhibition. Your shoes detect foot action through force sensors and exchange data with a mobile microphone-based sensing floor. The sensations underfoot increase as the wearer approaches a wall of the exhibit so his or her reaction can be observed as the snow or mud gets deeper.

Web links

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjArsJNWluk
www.niwproject.eu/news.php?extend.58.6
www.niwproject.eu

Contact: Dr. Federico Fontana

Primary affiliation: University of Udine
Position: Assistant Professor
City: Udine
Country: Italy
Web Site: www.uniud.it

Stand: 3