Time: 3:00 - 4:00pm Venue: BR 4.02 Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms Peter Landin Building London E1 4NS
Title: How humans communicate through touch by Dr Atsushi Takagi, Human Robotics group, Bioengineering, Imperial College London
Abstract: We interact with humans on a daily basis using several senses. The least studied of these is touch, like when parents assist a child to take their first steps, and during tango dancing. In this talk, I will shed some light on the mechanism of physical coordination through experiments and by simulating human behaviour computationally. First, I highlight the need to control the cognitive biases that affect the behaviour of interacting pairs. Then, I provide evidence that humans infer a partner’s intentions through touch, and show how a robot imbued with this ability could assist patients undertaking physiotherapy.
Bio: Atsushi Takagi received his MSc in Physics in 2011 from Imperial College London, where he also received his PhD in 2016 on the “Mechanism of interpersonal sensorimotor interaction” which examined how pairs, like during Tango dancing, coordinate their actions. He uncovered the mechanism that enables physically interacting partners to exchange certain information through haptics or touch.