News and agenda

Research by the Haptics Lab into symbiotic driving will be shown on Dutch television in prime time. David Abbink was interviewed by Vivianne Bendermacher to explain and demonstrate the current issues with driver-automation interaction, and how our research contributes to solving these.

Semi-automated vehicles on our motorways, a mobile robot arm that can effectively intervene in a disaster area, drones: these are all examples of robots that exist our unpredictable environment. These robots cannot manage without human intervention, however: behind every successful robot there’s a human being. A strong foundation for operating robot arms and robot vehicles is haptics: our innate ability to feel our body.

An international team from TU Delft and the Czech Technical University (CTU) based in Prague have won the Taxify Self-driving Fleet Optimisation Challenge. Representatives from TU Delft included researchers Javier Alonso Mora and Michal Cap, who work at the Department of Cognitive Robotics (CoR) at the Automated Mobility-on-Demand with Ride-sharing (AMR) research group. The aim of the challenge was to optimise the operation of a fleet of self-driving passenger service vehicles, for example taxis in an urban environment.

Dean Theun Baller and Hans Hellendoorn, head of the Department of Cognitive Robotics, oversaw the festive opening of the new CoR lab this month.