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Research Bernoulli Institute Autonomous Perceptive Systems Research

Projects

Current PhD projects:

Accessing historical handwritten archives, cultural treasure from the past, involves difficulties. Aging manuscripts, different style of writing, weakly structured, ink problems and low quality of the material of papers make historical scripts hard to read. Moreover, sloppy writing under difficult field-work conditions make reading problematic.

Recently, many historical collections are scanned and stored in the digital systems. During recent decades, several methodologies for transforming images of handwritten scripts into letter codes have been developed. When, small lexicons or single-writer documents, such as address recognition and bank check processing, are considered, fairly good recognition rates are achieved. However, in investigating large lexicons and historical scripts, we face many challenges for which no satisfactory solution has been found thus far.

Picture
Picture

In this project, we aim to interpret the historical scripts and drawing collected by scientists of the Natuurkundige Commissie between year 1820 and 1850. It is one of the most precious collections within the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and contains 17000 pages of handwritten scripts and drawing of Natuurkundige Commissie’s scientific exploration of the Indonesian Archipelago. The manuscript consists the personal notes based of the scientists’ natural observation in the jungle in four languages including Dutch, English, German and Latin, and also drawings of some animals and plants pained by artists.

bird
bird

In this project, fundamentally new methods for handwriting recognition will be developed within the MONK framework, a state-of-the-art machine learning handwriting system. Apart from deep learning methods, multilevel knowledge will be used to integrate information on the committee’s voyages and other contextual knowledge of the species, anatomy, geographical locations and habitats to bootstrap and improve handwriting recognition.

Post-digital
Post-digital

POST-DIGITAL is a European H2020 Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (2020-2023) whose 15 partner institutions will provide academic and applied training opportunities to a cohort of 15 early stage researchers (ESRs) in neuromorphic computational technologies and their applications. A strong industrial presence in the network will provide our ESRs with the experience of practical applications and solutions beyond traditional digital methods. The MINDS team is leading the mathematical theory research in this consortium.

Project website: https://postdigital.astonphotonics.uk/

People: Herbert Jaeger, Steven Abreu, Guillaume Pourcel

MeM-scales
MeM-scales

MeM-scales (Memory technologies with multi-scale time constants for neuromorphic architectures) is a European H2020 ICT project (2020-2022) with a consortium of 9 academic and industrial partners. The mission is to build ultra-low power embedded and pervasive computing systems which realize core aspects of cognitive computing, in particular integrating information across several memory timescales. The MINDS is leading the mathematical theory branch of research in this consortium.

Project website: https://memscales.eu/

People: Herbert Jaeger , Celestine Lawrence

MyLeg
MyLeg

MyLeg (Smart and intuitive osseointegrated transfemoral prostheses embodying advanced dynamic behaviors) is an European Horizon 2020 ICT-25-2016-2017 (Research and Innovation action) project. The aim is to develop a smart and intuitive osseointegrated transfemoral prosthesis embodying advanced dynamic behaviours. The MyLeg prosthetic system will be directly anchored to the amputee’s bone by means of osseointegrated implant to enhance the human-prosthesis interaction, perception, and motion capabilities. Further, the system will include implantable myoelectric sensors on targeted reinnervated muscles to realize an intuitive EMG control and will provide a high-level of cognition abilities. Moreover, the system will implement variable stiffness actuators that guarantee high adaptability with respect to different tasks, dependability, and decisional autonomy. The MyLeg system will exploit light-weighted materials for sensing and energy harvesting. These capabilities will lead to a new generation of powered transfemoral prosthetic legs that can be intuitively operated, sensed, and trusted as the healthy and reliable counterpart for a variety of tasks.

Project website: htts://www.myleg.eu/

People: Raffaella Carloni, Aniket Mazumder , Vishal Raveendranathan , Gregorio Tagliabue , Johnnidel Tabucol

Magnify
Magnify

Magnify (From nano to MAcro: a GrouNdbreakIng actuation technology For robotic sYstems) is an European Horizon 2020 FETOPEN-01-2016-2017 (Research and Innovation action) project. The aim is to design and realize a new generation of artificial muscles for robotic systems, characterized by high force-to-weight ratio, high flexibility, fast reacting properties, and intrinsic rigidity tuning. The project will use billions of artificial molecular machines, organized in polymer electrospun nanofibers and controlled by electrical stimuli, to realize an artificial macroscopic muscle.

Project website: htts://www.magnifyproject.eu/

People: Raffaella Carloni , Riccardo D’Anniballe , Danica K. Tan

Soft Robotics : This project aims to develop novel actuation systems, which are the key enabling components for motion generation of robots. More precisely, the focus is on: (i) the design and fabrication of actuation components for soft robots by using novel (soft) materials and design approaches; (ii) development of (analytical, numerical, predictive) models; (iii) develop of (non-linear) control techniques; (iv) experimental validation.  

People: Raffaella Carloni, Jiahao Pan, Xiao Yang

Health technology
Health technology

CoAdapt (Optimal Transfemoral Amputee-Prosthesis Co-Adaptation) has been granted by HTRIC (Health Technology Research and Innovation Cluster), as a collaboration between the Robotics Lab and the University Medical Center Groningen (Dept. Human Movement Sciences - Section Rehabilitation). 

Given the great challenge of providing people with lower limb amputation with an artificial limb that can mimic the behavior of its biological counterpart, the CoAdapt project aims at developing a human-in-the-loop approach in which the user and the (control settings and mechanical parameters of the) prosthesis co-adapt to each other in an optimization process.

People: Raffaella Carloni , Chengxiang Liu

q-mat

Q-Mat (Qualitative modeling, simulation and exploration of multi-phenomenal materials dynamics). The aim of the Q-Mat project is to pioneer a new qualitative physics formalism (QPF), together with a qualitative physics engine (QPE) that is able to simulate a wide range of nonlinear physical dynamical phenomena with fast runtimes. The two advantages of the QPE — a broad range of phenomena that can be simulated, and high speed — will be bought with sacrificing numerical accuracy. Q-Mat is funded through the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center (CogniGron) and comprises two PhD projects, one focusing on the algorithmic implementation of the QPE, and the other one on experimental materials preparations for validation.

People: Fabian IJpelaar , Foelke Janssen , Beatriz Noheda , Herbert Jaeger

Last modified:26 January 2024 4.45 p.m.