IROS 2019 - Macau, China

Praminda is Professor of Assistive Robotics and Intelligent Health Technologies. She is a member of both the Bristol Robotics Lab and the Healthcare Technology Hub. From 2014 to 2018, she was also Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability, a not-for-profit SME who design Assistive Technology. 

Praminda's recent portfolio of Innovate UK, RCUK and EC funded projects include socially and physically assistive robotics and IoT sensor-based intelligent technology to support older adults with ageing-related impairments. Her research covers safe, accessible and collaborative Human-Robot Interaction, Sensing and Intelligent Activity Recognition, and Adaptive Machine Learning Systems.

Professor Sanja Dogramadzi is leading Healthcare Robotics group (REACH) in Bristol Robotics Laboratory. She has a degree in Mechanical and Control Engineering and holds a PhD in medical robotics from University of Newcastle. Before joining UWE, she worked at University of Newcastle and University of Leeds. 

Sanja's research interests include design and control of surgical robots for minimally invasive fracture surgery and robot-assisted MIS, rehabilitation robots, physical assistance robots and safe and ethical human-robot interaction. She has led and coordinated many research projects funded by UK councils, Innovate UK, NIHR and European Commission and have been awarded more than £4M in the last five years. 

Dr. Jee-Hwan Ryu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Inha University, South Korea, in 1995, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from KAIST, South Korea, in 1997 and 2002, respectively. 

From 2002 to 2003, he worked as a post-doc researcher in the department of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, and at the similar time, he was also affiliated with the institute of robotics and mechatronics in DLR as a visiting scientist. He joined KAIST in 2019 as an associate professor. Prior to that, he was a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at KOREATECH (2005-2019), and a research professor in the department of electrical engineering at KAIST (2003-2005). His research interests include haptics, telerobotics, exoskeletons, and autonomous vehicles. 

He has received several awards including IEEE Most Active Technical Committee Award as a Co-chair of TC Haptics in 2015, Best poster award in 2010 IEEE Haptic Symposium. He has been served as an Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, and since 2017, he has been serving as an Associate Editor-in-chief in World Haptics Conference. He was involved in many international conference organizations, and especially, he has been served as a general chair of AsiaHaptics2018. 

Dr Aghil Jafari is a Senior Lecturer in Robotics at UWE. Dr Jafari received his MSc in Mechatronics Engineering ('11) from the Amirkabir University in Tehran, and earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering (’15) from the KoreaTech University in Cheonan. Before becoming a Senior Lecturer in Robotics at UWE, he was a Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics. 

His main research interests broadly involve the areas of robotics (e.g., systems Modelling, Stability and Control) and Cyber-Physical Systems (e.g., haptics, Teleoperation and  Telerobotics).

Filippo Cavallo, MScEE, Phd in Bioengineering, is Assistant Professor at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, (Pisa, Italy), focusing on cloud and social robotics, ambient assisted living, wireless and wearable sensor systems, biomedical processing, acceptability and ICT and AAL roadmapping. He participated in various National and European projects and currently is project manager of Robot-Era, AALIANCE2 and Parkinson Project.

Research interests: 

• Service and Assistive Robotics for “ageing well” applications, including integration of robotic systems in smart environments, navigation and localization techniques, and advanced natural human robot interfaces. 
• Wireless sensor networks for Smart Environments and Ambient Assisted Living applications, including development of environmental and wearable sensors with low-power design, Ambient Intelligent algorithms, networking strategies, and localization.
• Wearable sensor network for musculoskeletal modeling of human body and their application to biomechanics, gesture analysis and human motion measurement.

My interests are in the design and assurance of safety-critical systems, with a particular emphasis on Digital Health (e.g. ePrescribing and self-management apps) and AI systems (e.g. for clinical diagnosis and autonomous and connected driving). 

In 2015, I was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship to collaborate with the NHS and NHS Digital on evidence-based means for assuring the safety of digital health systems (featured here: Patient safety and digital technologies: A software engineer’s adventures in healthcare). 

I teach extensively on York's postgraduate programme in safety-critical systems engineering. I am currently the Chair of Research Studies in Computer Science. I am also an academic lead on the Assuring Autonomy International Programme, a £12 million initiative funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the University of York.