Call for presentations

We want to focus on high quality presentations and posters and therefore we do not request to submit a full length paper. If you are interested to give a talk or present a poster please send us (via.icraworkshop@gmail.com) a brief biography and a short (max 1 A4) summary of the contents. We encourage presentations submissions containing both a state-of-the-art as well as personal research together with some elements to start an interesting discussion. The following applications of variable impedance actuators will be discussed:

• Manipulation
• Locomotion
• Rehabilitation/prostheses

• what is an optimal design for a variable impedance actuator (VIA),
• what can VIA do that SEA can’t, physical vs software VIA,
• how to control optimally the stiffness for energy efficiency and safety,
• do we need active damping,
• what are the desired specs of VIA (impedance range, time constant for impedance change,
• what about multi joint VIA (off diagonal spring matrix entries).
• trade-off between mechanical complexity and performance gain
• trade-off between safety and performance. VIA actuators are regarded as a source of safety but also as a way to increase available peak force/velocity (power). This presumably works only with additional control/planning effort.
• trade-off between hardware-software compliance. Do we need more or less control for VIA actuators compared to conventionally designed joints?
• what can be learned from biomechanical modelling and measurement of human impedance