Coordinating With a Robot Partner Affects Neural Processing Related to Action Monitoring.

Robots start to play a role in our social landscape, and they are progressively becoming responsive, both physically and socially. It begs the question of how humans react to and interact with robots in a coordinated manner and what the neural underpinnings of such behavior are. This exploratory study aims to understand the differences in human-human and human-robot interactions at a behavioral level and from a neurophysiological perspective.

Imitating by Generating: Deep Generative Models for Imitation of Interactive Tasks.

To coordinate actions with an interaction partner requires a constant exchange of sensorimotor signals. Humans acquire these skills in infancy and early childhood mostly by imitation learning and active engagement with a skilled partner. They require the ability to predict and adapt to one's partner during an interaction.

Nanoscale Analysis of a Hierarchical Hybrid Solar Cell in 3D.

A quantitative method for the characterization of nanoscale 3D morphology is applied to the investigation of a hybrid solar cell based on a novel hierarchical nanostructured photoanode. A cross section of the solar cell device is prepared by focused ion beam milling in a micropillar geometry, which allows a detailed 3D reconstruction of the titania photoanode by electron tomography. It is found that the hierarchical titania nanostructure facilitates polymer infiltration, thus favoring intermixing of the two semiconducting phases, essential for charge separation.

Hyperbranched quasi-1D TiO2 nanostructure for hybrid organic-inorganic solar cells.

The performance of hybrid solar cells is strongly affected by the device morphology. In this work, we demonstrate a poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)/TiO2 hybrid solar cell where the TiO2 photoanode comprises an array of tree-like hyperbranched quasi-1D nanostructures self-assembled from the gas phase. This advanced architecture enables us to increase the power conversion efficiency to over 1%, doubling the efficiency with respect to state of the art devices employing standard mesoporous titania photoanodes.