Assessing REALTER simulator: analysis of ocular movements in simulated low-vision conditions with extended reality technology.

Immersive technology, such as extended reality, holds promise as a tool for educating ophthalmologists about the effects of low vision and for enhancing visual rehabilitation protocols. However, immersive simulators have not been evaluated for their ability to induce changes in the oculomotor system, which is crucial for understanding the visual experiences of visually impaired individuals. This study aimed to assess the REALTER (Wearable Egocentric Altered Reality Simulator) system's capacity to induce specific alterations in healthy individuals' oculomotor systems under simulated low-vision conditions.

Artificial cognition vs. artificial intelligence for next-generation autonomous robotic agents.

The trend in industrial/service robotics is to develop robots that can cooperate with people, interacting with them in an autonomous, safe and purposive way. These are the fundamental elements characterizing the fourth and the fifth industrial revolutions (4IR, 5IR): the crucial innovation is the adoption of intelligent technologies that can allow the development of , similar if not superior to humans. The common wisdom is that intelligence might be provided by AI (Artificial Intelligence), a claim that is supported more by media coverage and commercial interests than by solid scientific evidence.

Blind people can actively manipulate virtual objects with a novel tactile device.

Frequently in rehabilitation, visually impaired persons are passive agents of exercises with fixed environmental constraints. In fact, a printed tactile map, i.e.

Spatial Sensory References for Vestibular Self-Motion Perception.

While navigating through the surroundings, we constantly rely on inertial vestibular signals for self-motion along with visual and acoustic spatial references from the environment. However, the interaction between inertial cues and environmental spatial references is not yet fully understood. Here we investigated whether vestibular self-motion sensitivity is influenced by sensory spatial references.

A robot-aided visuomotor wrist training induces motor and proprioceptive learning that transfers to the untrained ipsilateral elbow.

Background: Learning of a visuomotor task not only leads to changes in motor performance but also improves proprioceptive function of the trained joint/limb system. Such sensorimotor learning may show intra-joint transfer that is observable at a previously untrained degrees of freedom of the trained joint.

Objective: Here, we examined if and to what extent such learning transfers to neighboring joints of the same limb and whether such transfer is observable in the motor as well as in the proprioceptive domain.

Active vision gates ocular dominance plasticity in human adults.

Primary visual cortex (V1) retains a form of plasticity in adult humans: a brief period of monocular deprivation induces an enhanced response to the deprived eye, which can stabilize into a consolidated plastic change despite unaltered thalamic input. This form of homeostatic plasticity in adults is thought to act through neuronal competition between the representations of the two eyes, which are still separate in primary visual cortex. During monocular occlusion, neurons of the deprived eye are thought to increase response gain given the absence of visual input, leading to the post-deprivation enhancement.

Vestibular contribution to spatial encoding.

Determining the spatial relation between objects and our location in the surroundings is essential for survival. Vestibular inputs provide key information about the position and movement of our head in the three-dimensional space, contributing to spatial navigation. Yet, their role in encoding spatial localisation of environmental targets remains to be fully understood.

How much I moved: Robust biases in self-rotation perception.

Vestibular cues are crucial to sense the linear and angular acceleration of our head in three-dimensional space. Previous literature showed that vestibular information precociously combines with other sensory modalities, such as proprioceptive and visual, to facilitate spatial navigation. Recent studies suggest that auditory cues may improve self-motion perception as well.

Is It Me or the Robot? A Critical Evaluation of Human Affective State Recognition in a Cognitive Task.

A key goal in human-robot interaction (HRI) is to design scenarios between humanoid robots and humans such that the interaction is perceived as collaborative and natural, yet safe and comfortable for the human. Human skills like verbal and non-verbal communication are essential elements as humans tend to attribute social behaviors to robots. However, aspects like the uncanny valley and different technical affinity levels can impede the success of HRI scenarios, which has consequences on the establishment of long-term interaction qualities like trust and rapport.

Mental Rotation Skill Shapes Haptic Exploration Strategies.

Haptic exploration strategies have been traditionally studied focusing on hand movements and neglecting how objects are moved in space. However, in daily life situations touch and movement cannot be disentangled. Furthermore, the relation between object manipulation as well as performance in haptic tasks and spatial skill is still little understood.

Interindividual differences influence multisensory processing during spatial navigation.

When moving through space, we encode multiple sensory cues that guide our orientation through the environment. The integration between visual and self-motion cues is known to improve navigation. However, spatial navigation may also benefit from multisensory external signals.

Corrigendum: A Socially Adaptable Framework for Human-Robot Interaction.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2020.

Changes in audio-spatial working memory abilities during childhood: The role of spatial and phonological development.

Working memory is a cognitive system devoted to storage and retrieval processing of information. Numerous studies on the development of working memory have investigated the processing of visuo-spatial and verbal non-spatialized information; however, little is known regarding the refinement of acoustic spatial and memory abilities across development. Here, we hypothesize that audio-spatial memory skills improve over development, due to strengthening spatial and cognitive skills such as semantic elaboration.

Enabling visually impaired people to learn three-dimensional tactile graphics with a 3DOF haptic mouse.

Background: In this work, we present a novel sensory substitution system that enables to learn three dimensional digital information via touch when vision is unavailable. The system is based on a mouse-shaped device, designed to jointly perceive, with one finger only, local tactile height and inclination cues of arbitrary scalar fields. The device hosts a tactile actuator with three degrees of freedom: elevation, roll and pitch.

Efficacy of wrist robot-aided orthopedic rehabilitation: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: In recent years, many studies focused on the use of robotic devices for both the assessment and the neuro-motor reeducation of upper limb in subjects after stroke, spinal cord injuries or affected by neurological disorders. Contrarily, it is still hard to find examples of robot-aided assessment and rehabilitation after traumatic injuries in the orthopedic field. However, those benefits related to the use of robotic devices are expected also in orthopedic functional reeducation.

An audio-visual motor training improves audio spatial localization skills in individuals with scotomas due to retinal degenerative diseases.

Several studies have shown that impairments in a sensory modality can induce perceptual deficits in tasks involving the remaining senses. For example, people with retinal degenerative diseases like Macular Degeneration (MD) and with central scotoma show biased auditory localization abilities towards the visual field's scotoma area. This result indicates an auditory spatial reorganization of cross-modal processing in people with scotoma when the visual information is impaired.

Machines Like Us and People Like You: Toward Human-Robot Shared Experience.

In the past years, the field of collaborative robots has been developing fast, with applications ranging from health care to search and rescue, construction, entertainment, sports, and many others. However, current social robotics is still far from the general abilities we expect in a robot collaborator. This limitation is more evident when robots are faced with real-life contexts and activities occurring over long periods.

A robot-aided visuomotor wrist training induces gains in proprioceptive and movement accuracy in the contralateral wrist.

Proprioceptive training is a neurorehabilitation approach known to improve proprioceptive acuity and motor performance of a joint/limb system. Here, we examined if such learning transfers to the contralateral joints. Using a robotic exoskeleton, 15 healthy, right-handed adults (18-35 years) trained a visuomotor task that required making increasingly small wrist movements challenging proprioceptive function.

A Socially Adaptable Framework for Human-Robot Interaction.

In our everyday lives we regularly engage in complex, personalized, and adaptive interactions with our peers. To recreate the same kind of rich, human-like interactions, a social robot should be aware of our needs and affective states and continuously adapt its behavior to them. Our proposed solution is to have the robot learn how to select the behaviors that would maximize the pleasantness of the interaction for its peers.

Emerging Adults' Expectations About the Next Generation of Robots: Exploring Robotic Needs Through a Latent Profile Analysis.

The investigation of emerging adults' expectations of development of the next generation of robots is a fundamental challenge to narrow the gap between expectations and real technological advances, which can potentially impact the effectiveness of future interactions between humans and robots. Furthermore, the literature highlights the important role played by negative attitudes toward robots in setting people's expectations. To better explore these expectations, we administered the Scale for Robotic Needs and performed a latent profile analysis to describe different expectation profiles about the development of future robots.

The RT-Chair: a Novel Motion Simulator to Measure Vestibular Perception.

Vestibular perception is useful to maintain heading direction and successful spatial navigation. In this study, we present a novel equipment capable of delivering both rotational and translational movements, namely the RT-Chair. The system comprises two motors and it is controlled by the user via MATLAB.

Development of visual perception of others' actions: Children's judgment of lifted weight.

Humans are excellent at perceiving different features of the actions performed by others. For instance, by viewing someone else manipulating an unknown object, one can infer its weight-an intrinsic feature otherwise not directly accessible through vision. How such perceptual skill develops during childhood remains unclear.

The Sound of Scotoma: Audio Space Representation Reorganization in Individuals With Macular Degeneration.

Blindness is an ideal condition to study the role of visual input on the development of spatial representation, as studies have shown how audio space representation reorganizes in blindness. However, how spatial reorganization works is still unclear. A limitation of the study on blindness is that it is a "stable" system and it does not allow for studying the mechanisms that subtend the progress of this reorganization.

Assessment of human wrist rigidity and pain in post-traumatic patients.

The aim of this work is to present a novel robot-based method to assess the sources of a lack of functionality in patients with recent traumatic wrist injuries. Post-traumatic patients experience limited range of motion as well as strength and proprioceptive deficits. These dysfunctions are related to different complications that usually follow the injuries: pain, increased rigidity, lack of movement fluency and loss of stability could arise differently, according to the severity, site and kind of lesion.