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ERC Starting Grant for Ali Akyildiz

Read more ERC Starting Grant for Ali Akyildiz

Can robots invent tools like our ancient ancestors did?

Read more Can robots invent tools like our ancient ancestors did?

Successful demo of long-range remotely-controlled vessels

Read more Successful demo of long-range remotely-controlled vessels

Vacuuming-up rare metals from the deep sea floor

Read more Vacuuming-up rare metals from the deep sea floor

Emission-free and circular shipping by improving the use of different battery systems

Read more Emission-free and circular shipping by improving the use of different battery systems

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Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE)

Saskia van Heumen TU Delft Best Graduate 2022

Saskia van Heumen has been voted TU Delft’s Best Graduate 2022 for her outstanding research on the use of LED photoacoustics in treating Lymphoedema.

ERC Starting Grant for Ali Akyildiz

The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Starting Grant to Ali Akyildiz. Akyildiz’s research focusses on cardiovascular biomechanics, specifically individual people’s susceptibility to cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, due to biomechanical failure in their blood vessels. This 1.5 million euros grant is to cover the costs of a five-year research programme, and is awarded to researchers who are at the start of their career, but have already excelled in a promising line of research.

OpenSim Creator: Empowering biomedical research with biomechanical models wins CZI EOSS Award

Ajay Seth has been awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) grant of US$ 350,000 to develop his project, OpenSim Creator. This open-source biomechanical simulator will enable researchers worldwide to create accurate neuromuscular and musculoskeletal models within hours, enabling better and faster responses to biomedical questions about human and animal mobility.

Can robots invent tools like our ancient ancestors did?

How did ancient humans learn to make tools? And can we apply that knowledge to help AI-based robots learn creative skills? Carlos Hernandez Corbato and Geeske Langejans are heading up the TU Delft part of the multi-national METATOOL project, which is a unique combination of archaeology, neuroscience and robotics.

Successful demo of long-range remotely-controlled vessels

The first fully-automated demo of AVATARs - autonomous emission-free waterways vessels - took place on the pond in front of the 3mE building. Three model-scaled vessels neatly demonstrated their manoeuvrability, precision controlled turning and steering capabilities thanks to long-range Wi-Fi and 4G communications and newly-developed AI directed collision-avoidance technology.

Vacuuming-up rare metals from the deep sea floor

At the bottom of the ocean lie lumps of valuable metals such as copper, manganese, nickel and cobalt - materials crucial to accelerating the energy transition. A collaboration between five European countries called ‘Blue Harvesting,’ has designed and now tested a new collector that can gather these nodules from the deep sea bottom with minimal disturbance to the natural environment.

Emission-free and circular shipping by improving the use of different battery systems

The maritime sector needs batteries for the transition to zero-emission shipping. Different ships with different operational profiles may require different batteries. The NWO Executive Board has awarded funding to two research projects of maritime researchers Henk Polinder and Andrea Coraddu. Both will focus on improving the use of different battery systems. The awards involve a sum of 4.2 million euros.

Drivers of automated vehicles are blamed for crashes that they cannot reasonably avoid

People seem to hold the human driver to be primarily responsible when their partially automated vehicle crashes. But is this reasonable? In a paper recently published in Nature Scientific Reports , researchers from the AiTech Institute investigated the mismatch between the public’s attribution of blame and finding from the human factors literature regarding human’s ability to remain vigilant in partially automated driving. Participants of the experiment blamed the driver primarily for crashes, even though they recognized the driver’s decreased ability to avoid them. The public expects drivers to remain vigilant and supervise the automated vehicle at all times, yet we know this is an unreasonable demand for a human driver; even highly-trained pilots struggle with supervising autopilot systems for prolonged periods. Drivers are unaware of what is happening in their surroundings, and they cannot respond as fast as the system requires. The imbalance between human-factor-related challenges with automation regarding driver ability and the participant’s responsibility attributions reveals a culpability gap. In this culpability gap, responsibility is not reasonably distributed over the involved human agents; the driver receives most blame, yet this may be unreasonable given their impacted ability to change the outcome. The findings of this work have implications. In terms of public discourse, based on the participants’ arguments, it seems that the majority of our participants do not consider the aforementioned human-centered challenges of automated driving in their responsibility attribution. This could indicate that humans are unaware of these effects of automation, which could lead to ‘unwitting omissions’. Drivers are unaware of the impact of automated driving on their ability to perform the required driving tasks should they need to, yet they are still considered to be responsible by their peers. The AiTech Institute focuses on the concept of meaningful human control over AI systems, in other words: humans and not computers and their algorithms remail morally responsible for relevant decisions. "The AiTech Institute leads interdisciplinary research around the concept of 'meaningful human control over AI systems'. This concept cannot be studied from one discipline, and so AiTech encourages researchers from different fields to learn each other's scientific language and then work together on complex issues, such as the topic of this study," says scientific director and professor David Abbink. The researchers argue that the responsibility attributed to a driver should be consistent with their ability to control the automated vehicle. If that ability is impacted by using the automation, responsibility should shift from the driver to the automation (or its manufacturer), which raises the question whether our participants’ ratings are reasonable. Providing public information about the driver-centered challenges associated with automated driving could be helpful, as well as driver training. MORE INFORMATION Click here to read the full paper, authored by Niek Beckers , Luciano Cavalcante Siebert , Merijn Bruijnes , Catholijn Jonker & David Abbink .

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About the faculty

Agenda

November

Thesis defence R. Sharifian

December

Thesis defence T. Melman

Online Q&A event for bachelor numerus clausus programmes

Thesis defence J. Tan

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