Cross-Cutting Challenges
The goal of the Cross-Cutting Challenges (CCC) event is to come together to focus on specific interdisciplinary challenges (“themes”) calling for united solutions from the haptics community. For more detail, please visit here.
Haptics toward Expanding Human Abilities
OrganizersMasahiko Inami, Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan
Yuichi Kurita, Professor, Hiroshima University, Japan
Kouta Minamizawa, Professor, Keio University, Japan
Abstract
Human history is a continuous challenge to extend our capability with the latest technologies available at the era. With stone tools woodworks machines electronics and computers we have extended our definition of the body. Now the exponential technologies of virtual/augmented reality wearable robotics and artificial intelligence deliver a new potential for human being to expand our abilities with integrating these technologies with our bodies and based on the trans-humanism to enforce and enhance the human ability humans obtain super power beyond the human capacity and also beyond the border between the age and the disabilities. For example recent wearable robotics technologies enable us to physically extend our body with having extra arms or fingers also to recover or even transcend the physical deficit with technologically enhanced prosthetic limbs. There are also many researches to get hyper-perception or sixth-sense. These technologies can also be applied for visually-impaired or deaf people to get substitutional perception to understand surrounding environments. Telepresence or Telexistence researches aims to create robotic human avatar that enable us to communicate the people in distance or experience distant environment with fully-immersive multi-modal perception in other words it provides non-physical mobility capability to human beings. Based on this concept XPRIZE foundation announced AVATAR XPRIZE in 2018 and industrialization of robotic avatar is becoming extremely active. There are also worldwide activities to apply these human augmentation technologies for sports. Cybethron proposed by Robert Riener in 2013 as a platform for the development of everyday-suitable assistance systems held the 1st competition in 2016. Superhuman Sports proposed by Masahiko Inami and Ichiya Nakamura in 2014 aims to create new sports that technologically-augmented superhumans compete each other. As Cross-Cutting-Challenge in the World Haptics Conference 2019 In Tokyo where the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held we would like invite haptics researchers robotics researchers neuro-scientists creative designers and start-up companies to discuss how haptics community can contribute toward the era of expanding human abilities and create better life.
Speakers

Professor, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo
(Human Augmentation & Information Somatics)
Web

Professor, Department of Information Engineering, University of Siena
(Robotics & Haptics)
Web

Associate Professor, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London
(Neuroscience)
Web

Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
(Design Engineering)
Web

Moderators


Program
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Tuesday, July 9th
14:00 World Haptics Conference 2019 Opening
14:15 CCC Opening
14:20-14:40 Plenary talk #1 – Prof. Masahiko Inami
14:40-15:00 Plenary talk #2 – Prof. Domenico Prattichizzo
15:00-15:20 Plenary talk #3 – Prof. Tamar Makin
15:20-15:40 Plenary talk #4 – Prof. Shunji Yamanaka
15:40-16:00 Plenary talk #5 – Dr. Charith Fernando
16:00-17:00 Panel discussion, Q&A
(Moderated by Prof. Yuichi Kurita & Prof. Kouta Minamizawa)