Benchmarking WRs and Educating WR experts

The COST Action on Wearable Robots is organizing two complementary workshops to discuss technical and societal aspects of WRs. The first, together with the EUROBENCH consortium, will discuss the guidelines on benchmarking WRs (from key enabling technologies, to testbeds and testing methods) as well as barriers to adoption and standardization processes. The second will discuss about the education of multi-disciplinary WR experts, the gaps and needs in the current education process.

For both workshops, no registration is required; seats are available on first come first serve basis in room A of the exo-Berlin venue.

 

October 22nd , Room A, 14:00 – 17:00
Workshop #1: Benchmarking Wearable Robots: from key enabling technologies, experimental methods to final applications”

Wearable robots (WRs) are increasingly moving out of the labs towards real-world applications. In order to be effectively and largely adopted by final end-users, a common benchmarking framework needs to be developed, at three main levels: first, WRs’ key enabling technologies should be characterized in order to allow fair and comprehensible comparisons of different systems performances; second, the experimental methods and protocols to test the systems with the human-in-the-loop should be replicable across different labs; third, the evaluation in the final application scenarios should consider the specific features of the deployment scenarios and end-users in a common testing framework. The COST Action on Wearable Robots and the EUROBENCH consortium will organize an open discussion and parallel working groups on this topic to provide guide the discussion on how to design testbeds and testing methods for WRs. Possible barriers to adoption and standardization processes will be also discussed.

 

October 23rd , Room A, 10:00 – 13:00
Workshop #2: Educating WR experts

Wearable robots are rapidly evolving and finding new applications in domains that were recently unthinkable, working ever closer in collaboration with their human users. This brings many challenges, especially related to the high interdisciplinarity involved in the development of new devices, which is typically not covered in traditional educational programs. This transformation should be carefully taken into account to provide suitable learning tools to students to prepare them to work in and lead the future of the wearable robotics field.

The main objective of this workshop is to discuss the current needs from education programs at all relevant educational levels, evaluated from the viewpoint of employers in the wearable robotics field (e.g., industrial, research, development). To do this, we will identify the desired profile of the future professional in wearable robots, and discuss the most suitable strategies, curricula and learning materials to fulfill this need.

 
Objectives of the workshop
The objectives of the workshop are to

  1. Identify the ideal profile of a professional in the field of wearable robots
  2. Identify areas of need in educational programs from an employer point-of-view
  3. Identify successful (and less successful) educational strategies
  4. Prepare a white paper on these insights and planned efforts.

 
Questions that we would like to discuss in the workshop
  • Which are the specific training needs at different educational levels? How to improve training?
  • A specialist in wearable robots vs. an interdisciplinary team?
  • Example cases of successful and less successful training strategies

 
Expected outcome
  • list of teaching courses, resources (e.g. online), best-practice approaches
  • insights on experiences regarding the adequacy of previous training for professionals in the field
  • identification of areas with lacking attention or resources
  • white paper on the SWOT analysis from experts in the field