The largest and most important conference on robotics, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2023 (ICRA) started today in ExCeL, London. The conference is co-organised by the Centre of Advanced Robotics at Queen Mary (ARQ). The general chair of the conference is Professor Kaspar Althoefer, head of ARQ and a SEMS academic.

Human Augmentation and Interactive Robotics team (HAIR) led by Dr Ildar Farkhatdinov, has multiple presentations and demonstrations at the conference.

Dr Sajeeva Abeywardena and Eisa Anwar are presenting their design, control and dynamics analysis of the wearable robotic tail designed by the team to support human posture and balance control in material handling tasks. Their work will be featured during the invited talk at the workshop on robotics and neuroscience of supernumerary limbs, and Eisa will demonstrate the robotic tail in action at the ARQ-QMUL stand in the exhibition area. Sajeeva's work on biomimetic control of a wearable robotic tail will also be presented at the workshop on animal-inspired robot control.

A first-year PhD student, Matteo Cecamore, will present his novel robotic ankle interface for exploring human biomechanics at workshops "Neuromechanics meet deep learning" and "Emerging paradigms for assistive robotic manipulation", as well as in the ARQ exhibition stand.

Nathalia Cespedez Gomez will present her work on assistive human-robot interfaces for dementia therapy at the Workshop on Socially-acceptable robots and at the late breaking reports poster session. Her demonstration with a human-like robot will be available in the exhibition area.

Dr Bukeikhan Omarali will present his PhD findings on human-operator behaviour and gaze during virtual reality-based robot teleoperation at a later breaking report session of the conference. He also demonstrated ARQ's robot bilateral robot teleoperation system during the laboratory tours at QMUL Mile End campus together with Gabriele Giudici.

Dr Joshua Brown will present his PhD findings on design and application of soft haptic interfaces at late breaking reports sessions and during the workshop on soft surgical robotics. The physical demonstration of Joshua's interface will be available at the exhibition stand of the centre.

Master of Engineering students, Tania Dandachli and Anisa Ahmad who worked with the HAIR team will to complete their final year project, will demonstrate their work on modular haptic interfaces at the ARQ-QMUL demonstration stand at the exhibition area.

Finally, Dr Ildar Farkhatdinov will attend the robotic avatars workshop to present the results on walking interfaces for virtual reality and telerobotics that was conducted with Dr Ata Otaran, a PhD-alumni of HAIR-ARQ.

HAIR team website: https://hair-robotics.qmul.ac.uk/

ARQ website: https://robotics.qmul.ac.uk/

IEEE IRA 2023 conference website: https://www.icra2023.org/