Submissions (Call for papers)

Special sessions

There will be two special sessions.

Special session 1:
Title: Interacting with Virtual Reality Applications
Proposers: Anna Sibilska-Mroziewicz, PhD; Jakub Możaryn, PhD
Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Mechatronics

Virtual Reality (VR) is an increasingly popular technology. The market of hardware and games for VR is expanding dynamically. However, VR can be used not only for entertainment. It can also be a very useful tool in education and engineering research. 

Confucius used to say, “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, let me do, and I will understand”. VR allows us to interact with physical objects, perform an endless series of experiments and analyze mechanical systems with visualized abstract properties, like forces, potentials and accelerations. This way, we can learn new skills without wasting resources, improve our movements’ precision, and grasp inside into the way “things work”.

We can use VR equipment to learn how to perform complicated medical operations, optimally hit the ball in tennis matches, or arrange an automated factory hall. We can also visualize chemical reactions, test mechanical systems and control algorithms or construct Ruby Goldberg’s machines. The patients can use VR for rehabilitation and athletes for training. The sky is the limit.

The main goal of the proposed session of MIDI2022 is to share ideas and experiences in interacting with Virtual Reality applications e.g., in education and engineering research. The special online session will be held on the Oculus Workrooms platform, so the part of participants equipped with Oculus Quest 2 can join a session as virtual avatars. All other participants can traditionally join an online session with video or audio streaming.

The Special Session will cover topics in the context of research in Interacting with Virtual Reality Applications, including but are not limited to the following:

• Applications & Experiences
• Collaborative Work in Virtual Environments
• Human-Machine Interaction & Usability
• Process Visualization
• Virtual Laboratories
• Virtual Reality for Bioengineering 
• Virtual Simulations of Mechanical Systems
• Virtual Reality in Rehabilitation 
• Virtual Reality for Improving Precision of Human Motion 

Special session 2:
Title: Advances in Collaborative Robotics
Proposers: Jan Klimaszewski, PhD, Jakub Możaryn, PhD, Krzysztof Wildner, PhD
Institution: Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Mechatronics

The last decades brought new human-machine collaboration (HMC) areas in the same working space, with examples in the industry, education, agriculture, healthcare services, security, and space exploration. For example, collaborative robotics aims to facilitate human-machine cooperation and introduce robots to the direct human space while maintaining safety rules. It is necessary to develop more natural human-machine interfaces to achieve these goals. In addition to ensuring human safety, these interfaces shall allow the machine to be equipped with more agile functions and skills. They are designed to follow special safety measures, handling human collision detection and allowing human behaviour prediction. By perceiving the situations, adaptive machines can adjust to accomplish collaborative tasks. This Special Session aims to collect and describe various innovative technologies to make the collaborative robots and adaptive machines more safe and agile. 

The Special Session will cover topics in the context of recent advances and future trends in interfaces for collaborative robotics and adaptive machine interfaces, including, but are not limited to the following: 

• Safety in collaborative robotics.
• Human – machine collaboration modelling and dynamics.
• Intelligent control strategies, especially adaptive and predictive controls.
• Human behaviour prediction in collaborative tasks.
• Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and vision-based algorithms.
• Bio-inspiration in human-robot or robot-robot collaboration.
• Human – machine interface design.
• Electronic skin interfaces.
• Collaborations in/with heterogeneous realities (e.g., real robot–virtual human collaboration).