Thesis Project Form

The domain of joint action encompasses social interactions where individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment. Coordination often relies on a direct mechanical coupling between agents, effectively creating a closed-loop system of force exchange. Unlike visual or auditory coordination, haptic interaction allows partners to simultaneously execute a motor task and communicate intentions through the "haptic channel." Whether carrying a heavy object or dancing, the partners must engage in continuous mutual adaptation, using tactile feedback to predict the other's movements and modulate their own forces to achieve stability and synchrony.

The student will be involved in a research project in the area of visuomotor coordination in human-robot interaction. In particular he will work on the design and development of an experimental setup which will include haptic interfaces, eye tracker and surface EMG. He will carry out a series of experiments with humans and will perform advanced analysis of the collected data.
The main activities are:
1) Definition of research questions based on literature and current state of the art.
2) Development of the experimental setup, including integration and calibration of the dyadic haptic interface and eye-tracking equipment. Implementation of experimental protocols and pilot testing.
3) Data collection with human participants
4) Synchronization of multimodal data and data analysis to extract meaningful results.
5) Summary and interpretation of results with respect to the initial hypotheses. Writing of the final report and thesis.

Matlab-Simulink and Unity programming skills
Scientific reasoning and research methodology
Statistical data analysis
Scientific report writing and communication of results
Teamwork and collaboration