EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Asia-Link Programme
Phase III
Grant Application Form

Open Call for Proposals 2006

Budget line: 19.1002

Reference: EuropeAid/123738/C/ACT/Multi Deadline for receipt of applications: 19 October 2006

Name of applicant:

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, INDIA

Dossier No
(for official use only)

Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006

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NOTICE

All personal data (such as names, addresses, CVs, etc.) mentioned in your application form will be processed in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data. Your replies to the questions in this form are necessary in order to assess your grant application and they will be processed solely for that purpose by the department responsible for the Community grant programme concerned. On request, you may be sent personal data and correct or complete them. For any question relating to these data, please contact the Commission department to which the form must be returned. Beneficiaries may lodge a complaint against the processing of their personal data with the European Data Protection Supervisor at any time (Official Journal L 8, 12.1.2001).

Please read and complete this form with all due care, in accordance with the guidelines for applicants. Please note that the procedure has changed. The evaluation of your application will only be performed if your concept note is provisionally selected. Your application will then undergo the evaluation. The eligibility conformity check will only be performed for the proposals that have been provisionally selected according to the score obtained after the evaluation, on the basis of the supporting documents requested by the European Commission and the Declaration by the applicant signed and sent together with the application.

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CONCEPT NOTE
1. Summary of the action
1.1 Brief description of the proposed action. In the last decade robotics has stepped out from industrial applications into human society as helpers, rehabilitation devices, welfare supervisors, and entertainment aids. Out of all these applications, human assistive robots are likely to play a major role in improving the lives of persons with disability due to old age, disease or injury. While ageing society of European countries need customized assistive robots, both European and Asian countries need assistive robots for severely disabled people whose proportion is uniform across the globe. Although European countries have already made visible progress in the field of assistive robotics, the field is still relatively new. It is needless to say that Asian countries like India are lagging behind in this very important field of research. However a collaborative project between Indian Universities and European Universities in the field of assistive robotics will not only produce a large scale specialized man-power that will support both the societies, but also EU can take advantage of such a collaborative effort to win over other competing nations such as US and Japan. Furthermore, assistive robotics is highly multi-disciplinary and involves many different research fields. This is ideal for linking universities from EU and Asia together since the broad coverage of different disciplines enables us to collaborate better at the university level and generate higher impact. With this back-drop, the main objective of our proposal entitled A Collaborative Academic Program for Innovation in Intelligent Assistive Robotics is to develop specialized man-power through rigorous basic and experimental research in major aspects of assistive robotics that includes rehabilitation robots, wheelchair robots and other mobility aides, and manipulator arms for the physically disabled. Simultaneously the proposal initiates a novel method of interactions between European and Asian Universities through synchronous e-learning, tele-robotics and exchange visits so that strength of each partner can be shared. In this regard, the project has a bold vision such as a student from an ill-equipped lab can perform remote experiments on a costly physical set-up in another laboratory. Following objectives are outlined in this project: To develop highly skilled human resources graduates with PhD and Masters degrees - in assistive robotics through collaborative basic and experimental research. To develop a long vision in assistive robotic research through two international workshops so that a farreaching impact can be made in this direction. In this regard the help of experts from EUROP, EURON and such bodies will be sought. To bring in a synchronism in assistive robotics education between EU and Asia through synchronous elearning and tele-robotics. This would enable to augment graduate level teaching courses through live eclasses by respective experts in partner-institutes. So also students can perform remote experimentation via internet using the concept of tele-robotics. To conduct road-shows on assistive robotic systems in EU and India to increase awareness among potential users. To facilitate participants of this proposal to learn foreign culture in industrial and academic sectors that would lead to mutual cooperation between Europe and Asia. To assist Institute of Engineering(IOE), Tribhuvan University, Nepal in the field of industrial automation and robotics so that they can start doing indigenous research in the field of robotics. It is planned that IOE will be helped to set up a robotics lab as well as to develop course curriculum in robotics. IOE will then act as a seed in Nepal to further disseminate the outcomes from this project to other universities in Nepal in the future. As part of the human resource development program, lead researchers in partner institute will jointly supervise Ph.D. and Masters students in following areas that has a common theme of development of a low cost visually navigated smart wheel-chair equipped with intelligent robotic arms including brain-operated assistive devices: a brain-computer interface (BCI) that allows a disabled person to control a smart wheelchair and robotic manipulator combination; a visual tracking system for operating the wheelchair as an automated guided vehicle (AGV) to give mobility; an integrated navigation system with both embedded and off-board sensors for safe navigation of the wheel chair; a self-organising control architecture for a redundant manipulator for natural execution of actions desired by the disabled user; a self-adaptive learning system that evolves multiple neural networks incrementally from simple to complex tasks for robotic control; an evolvable hardware system for controlling assistive robots and wheelchairs adaptively; development of an exo-skeletal robot for human hand support mechanical design, sensor fusion, and control. Fifteen faculty members from six institutes/Universities situated in four counties (India, Germany, UK and Nepal) will supervise 22 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students jointly for successful completion of the project. Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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2. Relevance:
2.1 How relevant is your proposal to the needs and constraints of the target country(ies) or region? As per a conservative estimate, 1 in 3500 of the world population may suffer from a neuro-muscular disorder such as motor neuron disease (MND). Such people may have no means to communicate with the external world at all. They may be provided mobility and enhanced autonomy through an appropriately designed practical brainoperated assistive robotic system. European countries such as UK and Germany are facing problems such as ageing of society, lack of carers and high labour cost of caregivers which can be adequately solved using customized assistive robotic systems. There are about 70 million people with disabilities in the EU. However only two rehabilitation robots have reached noticeable sales numbers on the market: the Handy1, and the MANUS. Based on the 2001 census, 27.87% of the disabled people which amounts to 61 million suffer from movement disability in India alone. Additionally India needs low cost assistive robots for the blind, deaf and dumb people. Above all, assistive and rehabilitation robots are urgently needed in health-care institutions of both EU and India to take care of needy patients. Since the field of assistive-robotics is relatively new, both basic and experimental researches are necessary to develop low-cost prototypes such that disabled people can afford them. This would require specialized man-power in the field of assistive robotics. India and Nepal are good sources of high quality manpower and European Universities have best research facilities. Thus EU-India-Nepal network at the university level can easily tap young man-power of India and Nepal to educate them in this field through a collaborative research and teaching which allows exchange visits, advanced research under joint supervision and provision for high quality experimental facilities. Moreover robotic research is yet to take a shape in Nepalese context for which the principal cause lies in the lack of academic curriculum regarding robotics and automation. These courses are vital for overall research interest as well as industrial development. Furthermore there is practically no infrastructure for development of robotics and automation in the country apart from a small student group, Robotics Club at the Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Thus the proposal aims to provide logistic support to IOE so that young Nepalese students will be greatly benefited and will be a great source of specialized man-power. We are very much convinced that EU, India and Nepal collaboration in assistive robotics will play a vital role to serve the humanity and is a step forward for EU to compete with Japan and US in this cutting-edge technology. 2.2 What are the problems to be resolved and the needs to be met? There is an urgent need for developing affordable assistive robotic systems for providing independence to ageing and disabled people. The primary focus of this proposal is to develop high quality engineering graduate researchers to perform basic research as well as experimental research necessary for generating expertise to build assistive robotic systems. Research objective is not only to develop robust and intelligent algorithms but also to find answers to building lost-cost prototypes. Simultaneously the need of IOE in terms of minimal infrastructure and specialized curriculum will be taken care of. Through joint supervision, we will train young graduates from Asia, set up potential common curricula and strengthen the links among all partner universities. 2.3 Who are the actors involved (final beneficiaries, target groups)? Target groups are the partners associated with this project where the knowledge frontier in the field of assistive robotics will be pushed much forward. The project will ultimately benefit a large number of graduates from EU and Asia as a result of our project, which would have laid down the foundation and mechanisms for sustained EU-Asia collaboration. Both European and Asian disabled community will be final beneficiaries for which such long term collaboration will yield low-cost health-care assistances. 2.4 What are the objectives and expected results? The natural outcome of this endeavour would be specialized manpower. Fifteen lead researchers from six institutes across four countries will guide 22 Ph.D. and Masters students. The research will be carried out in a collaborative fashion creating a strong scientific network between European and Asian Universities. Research results will be disseminated through scientific publications in major journals and conference proceedings. Efficacy of a low cost brain-operated visually navigated smart wheel-chair equipped with intelligent robotic arms will be demonstrated through road-shows in EU and Asia. Remote experimentation facility through tele-robotic system and distance education through synchronous e-learning will bring in synchronization in education between EU and ASIA. The overall objective will be the strengthening of EU-Asia links, especially among graduates and universities. There will be better understandings among EU and Asia partners. 2.5 What is the added value of the action (what adds the action by reference to (central or local) government action and actions implemented by non state actors)? All partners have already attracted substantial national funding to carry out research in some aspects of assistive robotics. Further, if Asia link programme supports this proposal, then it is possible for us to get additional funding from the respective research support institutes of the individual nations such as DAAD, Germany, Department of Science and Technology (DST), India, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK. Such additional funding can be used to recruit additional PhD students as well as for equipment support to develop low cost proto-types. The local governments, e.g., Birmingham City Council in UK, are all very keen on establishing close ties with Asian countries in higher education. Recently a UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) has been launched by UK and India governments to support collaborative projects between UK and Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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India. The proposed project thus fits the strategy of central and local governments very well and is likely to obtain additional support from local governments for certain activities, e.g., dissemination of project outcomes.

3. Methodology and Sustainability:

3.1 What are the main project activities? Following are the main activities: Human resource development - Fifteen faculty members from six institutes/Universities situated in four counties (India, Germany, UK and Nepal) will jointly supervise 22 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students in the broad area of intelligent assistive robotics. These students will perform basic and experimental research to develop necessary expertise to build low cost assistive robotic devices for disabled people. Synchronism in assistive robotics education between EU and ASIA will be brought out through synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. Logistic support to IOE Nepal will be provided for robotics education. Two international workshops one in India and other in Europe will be organized. The project will kick off with a work-shop in India in the first month. Ten experts will be invited to help the collaborative teams to properly project realistic goal. Also a course module on Soft-computing applications in Assistive Robotics will be formulated which will be floated as a graduate level 4-unit course. Another work-shop will be held after 2.5 years in Europe for critical evaluation of the project outcome with the help of same set of experts. Besides a popular graduate level course module on Assistive Robotics will be formulated at the end of this second workshop. Visibility of the outcome of this EU-Asia collaborative effort will be achieved through road shows as well as through dissemination of results in conference proceedings and journal publications. FWBI will act as transfer unit for exchange of ideas from this consortium to SMEs. So also Invacare UK Limited will closely monitor the research outcome for translating to feasible technology. 3.2 Who will be your main implementing partners, what is the length of your relationship with them and how will they be involved in the project? We are six partners: Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), India; International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad(IIITH), India; Institute of Automation, University of Bremen, Germany (IAT); University of Ulster, Magee Campus(UUM), UK; the University of Birmingham(UB), UK and the Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University, Nepal. This partnership was kick-started when Dr. L. Behera (LB) from IITK visited UUM in the summer 2006 for collaboration on brain-computer interface (BCI) based communication system using Quantum Neural Networks. The team further expanded when LB contacted Prof. Graeser from IAT, the group known for their research in Assistive Robotics and Dr. G. Prasad (GP) from UUM contacted Prof. Xin Yao from UB. IAT group has already a research link with IIITH. Incidentally, IOE has a long term connection with IITK where key technological information exchange takes place through specialized schools and quality improvement programme. IITK has been interacting with IAT for last two years in regard to assistive robotic research. The IIITH group have a very strong research relationship with IITK group as well. UB has been collaborating with the Mechanical Engineering Department of IITK since 2001, when an Asia-ITC grant was awarded to them. In a nut-shell, all six partners have a coherent view about the proposed plan and are determined to work as a team to achieve the end-result. Lead researchers of all six partner-institutes will share and supervise various modules of research objectively and jointly through exchange visits. The collaborative effort will be strengthened by involving senior Ph.D. students through exchange visits where they interact with their fellow Ph.D. scholars for joint research and experimentation. A total of 5 new Ph.D. students, 14 senior Ph.D. students and 3 M.Sc. students will carry out their thesis work through this proposal. Their thesis works will be jointly supervised by lead researchers from six institutes. Although IITK will take the responsibility for overall coordination, all six partners will jointly work as a team to make the project successful. 3.3 How will the project achieve sustainability? The duration of the present proposal is three years. The strong networking structure among European and Asian Universities would enable each institute to be self-sufficient in assistive robotics in general. If necessary, we will continue our collaboration through joint international project schemes such as DST, DAAD, Asia-link and UKIERI. Because the projects overall goal is to strengthen the links between universities from EU and Asia and all the partner universities have strong interests in long-term cooperation, we expect the partner universities will invest in our future activities, after we have built up a sound infrastructure and mechanism for cooperation with the support of this project. FWBI, Bremen, a technology transfer organization, will assist the partner-institutes to develop industry linkage so that this collaboration can be sustained in long term. In addition, Invacare UK Limited, a leading manufacturer of smart wheel chairs and assistive robotic products will closely work with the partner-institutes to take the research output from this joint venture to technology development. 3.4 Will it have multiplier effects? Yes, specialized man-power developed from this project will spread across the societies in both Europe and Asia through specialized jobs, entrepreneurship and academic and industrial research. Continuous interaction with FWBI Bremen and Invacare UK limited will result in a long-term collaboration in a framework of academia-industry linkage which will have a greater dissemination effect of the outcome of this project. Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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4. Expertise and operational capacity:

4.1 What is the experience of your organisation in project management? IITK has been consistently rated as number one tech-school both in teaching and research in India over the years. Every year the institute gets funding of more than Rupees 500 million for execution and implementation of various projects and consultancies. 4.2. What is the experience of your organisation and your partner(s) of the issues to be addressed? IIT, Kanpur, India IITK research group consists of four lead researchers, namely, Dr. Laxmidhar Behera (LB), Prof. P.K. Kalra (PKK), Dr. Ashish Dutta (AD) and Dr. Y.N. Singh(YNS); five senior Ph.D. students, and two new Ph.D. students to be recruited in this project. The group has extensive research experience in intelligent control, visual motor coordination, advanced neural learning algorithms, advanced control architecture, visual tracking, obstacle avoidance, humanoid robots and data modelling using soft-computing approaches. The group is also well equipped with advanced experimental set-ups such as a IRB140 6DOF manipulator with stereo vision system, SGI Prism server for visualization, a 7 DOF power-cube robot (redundant manipulator), Patrolbot for experimentation as automated guided vehicle (AGV) and many prototypes of humanoid robots such as static and dynamic walkers. Simultaneously the group is investigating sponsored research with a funding of Rupees 25 million. IIIT, Hyderabad, India IIIT, Hyderabad research group consists of Dr. Madhav Krishna, Dr. Bipin Indurkhya, Dr. C. V. Jawahar, two senior PhD students, one M.Sc. student, and one new Ph.D. students to be recruited in this project. The research focus involves multi robotic systems, mobile robotics and hybrid legged-wheeled vehicles. Research projects include probabilistic localization and mapping, SLAM, planning under constraints, multi sensor surveillance systems for multi target detection, cooperative localization and navigation and force feedback control for hybrid legged wheeled vehicles and visual information processing. A micro robot is being developed with informal collaboration with CAIR as a part of platform development to get insight into hardware and embedded system related issues as well as to jump start swarm robotics research. Previously a four wheeled steered robot was developed in collaboration with CMU. Institute of Automation (IAT), University of Bremen, Germany IAT is one of the premier research institutes in Bremen and Germany in the field of automation and robotics. IAT research group consists of Prof. Axel Grser, two senior Ph.D. students and one new Ph.D student to be recruited in this project. The institute is a pioneer in the field of assistive robotic research while it has strong expertise in areas such as Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, Signal Processing, Robust Image processing methods and Human Brain Interface. There are eighteen international PhD students and several master and diploma students as research assistants who are dedicated to research full-time. University of Ulster, Magee, UK The UUM research team consisting of three academic staff Dr. G. Prasad (GP), Prof. T. M. McGinnity (TMM), and Dr. Liam P. Maguire (LPM) and three existing senior PhD students Pawel Herman (PH), Alan Browne (AB), and Philip Vance (PV) is part of Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory (ISEL) research group based at the Magee Campus of the University of Ulster (UU) which is one of the largest universities in the UK. The university has also committed to recruit a new PhD student for inclusion in the team. The research areas are Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), assistive robotics, intelligent embedded systems, bio-inspired systems, evolvable hardware, self-organising and self-adapting computational systems, self-repair of complex embedded systems, and intelligent monitoring and control of industrial systems. The ISEL group has several EU collaborations; are board members of EURON:European Robotics Network, (an EU funded network of excellence) and as a result has a range of international links in the European robotics community. The research work on the BCI is being undertaken in collaboration with Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast and Guger Technologies, a spin off company from the Graz BCI group of the Technical University of Graz, Austria, involved in manufacturing of BCI systems. University of Birmingham, UK The Natural Computation Group led by Prof. Xin Yao at UB has more than 50 full-time researchers. Prof.. Xin Yao, Dr. Xiaoli Li and two senior PhD students will participate in this project. The Group, including the Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications (CERCIA), has currently more than 4 million external funding. It completed a very successful Asia-ITC project in 2002, where partner countries include India and Germany. In terms of UB, it is one of the leading European universities. It has more than 70 million external funding each year. It has rich experience of managing large EU projects, more than 10 million each year. UB also has right research expertise needed for the project, especially in computational intelligence techniques for intelligent systems (including evolutionary computation, neural networks and intelligent robotics). UBs standing in the world is partially indicated by the editorship of major IEEE Transactions and many other journals, and competitive grants from a number of different sources. It is also worth noting that UB has an active EU grant on intelligent robotics at the moment. In terms of industrial links, UB has worked with over 100 companies in the last few years, including both large multinationals and local SMEs. 6 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page

IOE, Tribhuvan University, Nepal The IOE research team consists of two lead researchers Dr. Arabinda Mishra, and Mr. AC Mahendra and 2 M.Sc. students. IOE needs logistic support to embark upon robotic education in a full swing.

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FULL APPLICATION FORM

Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006

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I.
1. DESCRIPTION

THE ACTION

1.1 Title: A Collaborative Academic Program for Innovation in Intelligent Assistive

Robotics
1.2 Location(s)
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), India International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), India Institute of Automation (IAT), University of Bremen, Germany; University of Ulster, Magee Campus(UUM), UK University of Birmingham(UB), UK. Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

1.3 Cost of the action and amount requested from the European Commission
Total eligible cost of the action Amount requested from the European Commission % of total eligible cost of action

EUR 1 069 666

EUR 748 852

% 70.00

NB: The % of total eligible cost of the action is calculated by dividing the Amount requested from the European Commission by the Total eligible costs of the action and multiplying by 100. Please note that the cost of the action and the contribution requested from the European Commission have to be expressed in EURO

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1.4

Summary (Maximum 1 page)

36 months Overall objective(s)

Duration of the action Objectives of the action

Human resource development: 15 faculty members from six institutes (UK, Germany, India and Nepal) will supervise 22 Ph.D. and masters students jointly in the field of assistive robotics. Curriculum Development: Institute of Engineering, IOE, Nepal will be assisted in robotic education.

Specific objective To develop specialized man-power in assistive robotics through collaborative basic and experimental research. To develop a long vision in assistive robotic research through two international workshops so that a far-reaching impact can be made in this direction. In this regard the help of experts from EUROP, EURON and such bodies will be sought. To augment graduate level teaching courses in Asian Universities through synchronous e-learning system from European Universities and vice-versa To conduct practical experiments on assistive robotic systems in European University from an Asian university through tele-robotic concept and to duplicate this facility among Asian Universities. To conduct road-shows on assistive robotic systems in EU and India to increase awareness among potential users. To assist Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Nepal in the field of industrial automation and robotics so that they can start doing indigenous research in the field of robotics. It is planned that IOE will be helped to set up a robotics lab as well as to develop course curriculum in robotics. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), India International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), India IAT, University of Bremen, Germany; University of Ulster, Magee Campus (UUM), UK University of Birmingham (UB), UK. Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University, Nepal FWBI, an organization for transfer of technology an associate An SME Invacare UK Limited an associate Partner Universities of this proposal will directly benefit in terms of scientific knowledge gained, sufficiency attained in assistive robotics and specialized man-power. Health-care system will be benefitted so also disabled community. Specialized man-power developed through this proposal will contribute further to research in assistive robotics, so also they may play a significant role in industrial sectors such as car-manufacturing units in India. EU can take benefit of such a scenario to attain a competitive edge. 19 Ph.D. students and 3 masters students will be benefitted through joint supervision in an international collaborative ambience. Synchronism in EU-Asia education system in the field of assistive robotics through synchronous e-learning and telerobotics will be brought out. Through FWBI transfer of technology to SMEs will be ensured. Further promotion of EU-Asia link.

Partner(s)

Target group(s) Final beneficiaries Estimated results

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Main activities

Human resource development Synchronism in Assistive robotics education between EU and ASIA through synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. Logistic support to IOE Nepal for robotics education. Visibility of EU-Asia collaborative efforts through international workshops, dissemination of results through conference proceedings and journal publications as well as road shows. FWBI will act as technology transfer unit for exchange of ideas from academia to SMEs. So also Invacare UK Limited will closely monitor the research outcome for translating to feasible technology.

1.5

Objectives (Maximum 1 page)

The main objectives of the proposal A Collaborative Academic Program for Innovation in Intelligent Assistive Robotics are in the area of human resource development and Curriculum Development. Design of innovative intelligent assistive robots for human assistance is necessary for EU and Asia and main thrust is given to joint supervision of Ph.D. and Masters students in basic and experimental research in this cutting edge-technology. 15 faculty members will jointly supervise 22 Ph.D. and Masters students for carrying out high-quality technological innovation in intelligent assistive robotics. Since the transfer of results to new or enhanced products is a core element in engineering research, in this proposal Invacare UK limited, a manufacturing sector in rehabilitation product development and FWBI Bremen, a transfer organisation are included. Faculty members will interact with industry in Asia and Europe to learn from first hand experiences of the different methods and approaches in European and Asian Companies. In a cooperating world, such industry-academia interactions will enhance EUAsia scientific link that will have long-term sustainability. Intelligent assistive robotics is highly multi-disciplinary and involves many different research fields. This is an ideal co-theme for linking universities from EU and Asia together since the broad coverage of different disciplines enables us to collaborate better at the university level and generate higher impact. In this regard, the Ph.D. thesis topics are so selected that expertise of partner-institutes complement each other resulting in a win-win situation for both EU and Asia. Ph.D. and Masters students will be trained under joint supervision while availing the best facilities that are there in partner institutes and associated manufacturing sector. In addition, specialized manpower development in smart wheelchairs and redundant manipulator systems as envisioned in this proposal will have an additional impact in industrial robotics given the fact that India has a large market in automobile industrial products where EU is going to play a major role. Another key aspect of this proposal is that partner-Universities will associate with an organization FWBI which is specialized in the transfer of research results from academia to SMEs and large companies which are active in the field of intelligent industrial and assistive robots. The present consortium will enhance their existing curricula with the goal to complement each other much better and define a standard in the education for assistive robots. New methods for long distance learning and learning in different cultures will be developed. In this context, two important objectives of the proposal are: Development of a synchronous e-learning scheme among partner-institutes to augment graduate level courses. Partner-institutes will be connected through tele-robotic systems to create one virtual laboratory so that students can verify their algorithms through remote experimentation on a physical set-up available in another laboratory.

The proposal is so planned that each new Ph.D. student recruited in an Asian University will spend one year in EU partner-institutes while a masters student will carry out his/her masters thesis in one of the EU partner-institutes. Similarly new Ph.D. student recruited in EU will visit India for one year. Besides senior students from EU and Asia will have exchange visit to get the maximum benefit of the joint supervision. Given the fact that out of 22, 15 students are from Asia, it is hoped that the maximum benefit of the Asia-link program will be derived by properly training the great human-potential available in India and Nepal while maximally utilizing the facilities in EU and Indian Universities. Simultaneously the provision of 11 exchange visits of lead researchers for joint supervision will lead to unique exchange of ideas and vibrant research atmosphere. If this proposal is funded by Asia-Link, then award of Joint Ph.D. degrees among Asia-EU partners will be pursued. Such a provision will usher a new era in Asia-EU scientific network and will have multiple effects. The technology transfer institute FWBI will gather information about the research results of the different partnerinstitutes and actively search for the transfer in new products and the upgrade of existing products. The transfer institute will evaluate the different approaches in Asia and Europe and will feed this information back to the 11 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page

researchers of the partner-institutes. It is expected that such a method will generate a consortium from academia and industry to design new or enhanced products that would sustain the present collaboration. Final outcome of project work will be demonstrated through road-shows in IAT, Bremen, UUM, UK, IITK, India and IIITH, India where SMEs will be invited. Collaborative deals with interested SMEs will be made who would like to adopt our technological innovations in assistive robotic systems. Two international workshops will be organized to take further guidance from international experts as well as for the critical assessment of the progress. Finally logistic support to IOE Nepal will be given so that IOE will act as a seed in Nepal to further disseminate the outcomes from this project to other universities in Nepal in the future.

1.6 Justification(Maximum 3 Pages) 1.6.1

Relevance of the action to the objectives and priorities of the programme The relevance of the proposal lies in the area of human resource development and curriculum development. Fifteen experienced faculty members will jointly supervise 14 senior Ph.Ds, 5 new PhDs and 3 senior masters students. Thus a total of 37 skilled persons in the field of assistive robotics will be benefited whose impact at the global level will surely be felt after the successful implementation of the project. Two international workshops will help this collaborative team to closely interact with the best experts in this field. While the project strongly connects EU and Asia Universities through research collaboration, simultaneously synchronism in education in the field of assistive robotics between EU and Asia will be achieved through e-learning and tele-education. A special school for IOE, Nepal will be conducted to foster the robotics education there while formulating up-to-date coursecurricula in robotics. Identification of perceived needs and constraints in the target country/ies, in particular in the region(s) concerned. As per a conservative estimate, 1 in 3500 of the world population may suffer from a neuro-muscular disorder. Such people may have no means to communicate with the external world at all. They may be provided mobility and enhanced autonomy through an appropriately designed practical brain-operated assistive robotic system. European countries such as UK and Germany are facing problems such as ageing of society, lack of carers and high labour cost of caregivers which can be adequately solved using customized assistive robotic systems. There are about 70 million people with disabilities in the EU. However only two rehabilitation robots have reached noticeable sales numbers on the market: the Handy1, and the MANUS. Based on the 2001 census, 27.87% of the disabled people which amounts to 6.1 million suffer from movement disability in India alone. Additionally India needs low cost assistive robots for the blind, deaf and dumb people. Above all, assistive and rehabilitation robots are urgently needed in health-care institutions of both EU and India to take care of needy patients. Since the field of assistive-robotics is relatively new, both basic and experimental researches are necessary to develop low-cost prototypes such that disabled people can afford them. This would require specialized man-power in the field of assistive robotics. India and Nepal are good sources of high quality manpower and European Universities have best research facilities. Thus EU-India network at the university level can easily tap young man-power of India to educate them in this field through a collaborative research and teaching which allows exchange visits, advanced research under joint supervision and provision for high quality experimental facilities. Moreover robotic research is yet to take a shape in Nepalese context for which the principal cause lies in the lack of academic curriculum regarding robotics and automation. These courses are vital for overall research interest as well as industrial development. Furthermore there is practically no infrastructure for development of robotics and automation in the country apart from a small student group, Robotics Club at IOE, TU. Thus the proposal aims to provide logistic support to IOE so that young Nepalese students will be greatly benefited and will be a great source of specialized man-power. Our proposed project can leverage on the existing infrastructures that some partners have and as a result save project effort and cost. For example, UUM has a very good facility for BCI based experiment, IAT has been pioneer in the smart-wheel chair technology, and IITK has very good facility for experimentation in assistive robotics. IAT runs a masters course in robotics and automation, UUM runs several MSc courses in the broad area of intelligent systems and the University of Birmingham has specialised MSc in natural Computation that can provide many useful modules to the students.

1.6.2

1.6.3 Description of the target group(s) and final beneficiaries and estimated number IIT, Kanpur, India IITK research group consists of four lead researchers, namely, Dr. Laxmidhar Behera (LB), Prof. P.K. Kalra (PKK), Dr. Ashish Dutta (AD) and Dr. Y.N. Singh; and five senior Ph.D. students, and two new Ph.D. students. The group has extensive research experience in intelligent control, visual motor coordination, advanced neural learning algorithms, advanced control architecture, visual tracking, obstacle avoidance, humanoid robots and data modelling using soft-computing approaches. This proposal has been prepared taking into account of the area of
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expertise necessary to develop an assistive robotic systems. The group is also well equipped with advanced experimental set ups such as a IRB140 6DOF manipulator with stereo vision system, SGI Prism server for visualization, a 7 DOF power-cube robot (redundant manipulator), Patrolbot for experimentation as automated guided vehicle (AGV) and many prototypes of humanoid robots such as static walker and dynamic walkers. Simultaneously the group investigating sponsored research with a funding of Rupees 25 million. IIIT, Hyderabad, India IIIT, Hyderabad research group consists of Dr. Madhav Krishna, Dr. Bipin Indurkhya and Dr. C. V. Jawahar and 2 senior students, one New Ph.D. students and one senior Masters students. The research focus is diverse and involves multi robotic systems, mobile robotics and hybrid legged wheeled vehicles. Research projects include probabilistic localization and mapping, SLAM, planning under constraints, multi sensor surveillance systems for multi target detection, cooperative localization and navigation and force feedback control for hybrid legged wheeled vehicles and visual information processing. The center's activities include algorithms for off-the-shelf mobile platforms as well as platform development. A micro robot is being developed with informal collaboration with CAIR as a part of platform development to get insight into hardware and embedded system related issues as well as to jump start swarm robotics research. Previously a four wheeled steered bot was developed in collaboration with CMU. The research is being funded by DST, CAIR, DRDO, MCIT, HP Labs among others. Institute of Automation (IAT), University of Bremen, Germany IAT is one of the premier research institutes in Bremen and Germany in the field of automation and robotics. IAT has three research groups: "Robotics and Process Automation", "System Dynamics and Control" along with "RealTime Systems". Currently, the institute has two professors; Prof. Axel Grser and Prof. Thiele Georg, both experienced and actively participating in current research projects of the institute. Apart from these professors, the institute has three other associate professors, Prof. Rdiger Kutzner, Prof. Kai Mller and Prof. Jrg Schultz. The institute also has four experienced researchers Dr. Dorin Aiteanu, Dr. Bernhard Graimann, Dr. Ola Friman, and Dr. Ivan Volosyak each of them concentrating their research on several topics namely; Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, Signal Processing, Robust Image processing methods and Human Brain Interface. There are also, eighteen international PhD students; and several master and diploma students as research assistants. The institute is currently pursuing active research in dealing with different aspects of automation and robotics. It covers topics like computer vision, robust image processing, reactive sensor based architecture, braincomputer interface, human machine interface, augmented reality, mapped virtual reality, motion planning, software framework for service robotics, and control systems. There have been different successful projects in the respective areas which are either completed or currently being pursued in collaboration with different research partners around Europe and Asia. To name a few from the many project partners, the institute has strong colloborations with Biens System Control Laboratory (BSCL), KAIST, Korea, Bremen Zentrum fr Mechatronik (BCM), Forschungsverbund Logistik (FOLO), Zentrum fr Kognitionswissenschaften (ZKW). In teaching the IAT is responsible for the international Master program on Information and Automation Engineering, a 2 year course program completely taught in English. IAT is also responsible for the specialization in Automation and Robotics for the B.Sc. and M.Sc. studies in Systems Engineering. On an academic note, each year several students visit the institute as exchange students under the umbrella of exchange student programs like ERASMUS, SOCRATES, DAAD, etc. The institute boasts excellent laboratory setups, hardware, and software required in the fields of robotics, process automation, and control systems. Students are trained to attain theoretical and practical knowledge on cutting edge technologies over the available range of laboratorial facilities. The institute gets funding from several research projects that are currently being carried out. The undertaken research projects are supported by various funding institutes and industries ranging from the local government based research funding institutions and the European Commission. Presently the EU-FP6 research programs BRAINROBOT is coordinated by IAT. On a national level the research programs AMAROB and MLK are coordinated by IAT. Prof. Graeser is a visiting advisory professor at KAIST, Korea and member of the FWBI board. University of Ulster, Magee, UK The UUM research team consisting of three academic staff Dr. G. Prasad (GP), Prof. T. M. McGinnity (TMM), and Dr. Liam P. Maguire (LPM) and three existing senior PhD students Pawel Herman (PH), Alan Browne (AB) and Philip Vance (PV), is part of Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory (ISEL) research group based at the University of Ulster, Magee Campus (UUM) which is one of the largest universities in the UK. The group research addresses complex problems in several areas such as Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), assistive robotics, intelligent embedded systems, bio-inspired systems, evolvable hardware, self-organising and self-adapting computational systems, self-repair of complex embedded systems, and intelligent monitoring and control of industrial systems. Senior PhD students associated with this proposal are researching in the area of BCI , optical flow-based navigation and wireless network-based localisation of a motorized wheelchair . The ISEL group has several EU collaborations; are board members of EURON2:European Robotics Network, (EU funded network of excellence) and as a result has a range of international links in the European robotics community. The research work on the BCI is being undertaken in collaboration with Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, UK and Guger Technologies, a spin off company from the Graz BCI group of the Technical University of Graz, Austria, involved in Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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manufacturing of BCI systems. The group has been successful in attracting research funding from a range of sources such as UKs Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), EU and local government. More recently, a 5 year Research Council UK (RCUK) Fellowship has been secured to research on biologicallyinspired hardware systems. Some relevant recent grants are: SenseMaker - a multi-sensory, task-specific adaptable perception system, (IST-2001-34712) Funded by the European Commission under IST research programme on Life-like Perception, (0.5M Euros), 2002-05. Neurofeedback for Enhanced Use of Mental Practice in Stroke Survivors and EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface, funded by Department of Learning, Govt. of N. Ireland, (5k), 2006. In terms of experimental facilities, BCI projects are supported by a state-of-the-art EEG-based BCI system bought from Guger Technologies OEG, Austria. The system is installed in a screened room, which is part of the advanced experimental facility of ISEL at the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems. It has 56 EEG channels and 8 electromyogram (EMG) channels interfaced to a high power industrial PC for Bio-signal processing under the MATLAB environment. The system also has an additional stimulation unit for interfacing both analogue and digital devices such as prosthetic limbs. A mobile BCI experimental setup is also available for on-site experimentation outside the lab in normal working environment. ISEL also has a well-resourced mobile robotics laboratory. It has a computer-controlled power wheel-chair and a robotic manipulator, Peoplebot, a fleet of Khepera robots. The group has recently procured a high specification FPGA platform (with an associated cost of 250K) that will enable the implementation of very large scale neural networks that would have performance comparable to sub-regions of the human brain. The University of Birmingham, UK The Natural Computation Group led by Prof. Xin Yao at UB has more than 50 full-time researchers (including PhD students). Prof.. Xin Yao, Dr. Xiaoli Li and two PhD students will participate in this project. The Group, including The Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications (CERCIA), has currently more than 4 million of external funding. It completed a very successful Asia-ITC project in 2002, where partner countries include India and Germany. In terms of UB, it is one of the leading European universities. It has more than 70 million external funding each year. It has rich experience of managing large EU projects, more than 10 million each year. There is a well-established infrastructure in UB for managing externally funded projects and for ensuring their success. UB also has right research expertise needed for the project, especially in computational intelligence techniques for intelligent systems (including evolutionary computation, neural networks and intelligent robotics). UBs standing in the world is partially indicated by the editorship of major IEEE Transactions and many other journals, and competitive grants from a number of different sources. It is also worth noting that the UB has an active EU grant on intelligent robotics at the moment. In terms of industrial links, we have worked with over 100 companies in the last few years, including both large multinationals and local SMEs. IOE, Tribhuvan University, Nepal The IOE research team consists of two lead researchers Dr. Arabinda Mishra and Mr. Mahendra and 2 masters students. IOE which was established in 1972 under the Tribhuvan University, Nepal has become not only a leading institute in Nepal but a reputed institute at regional level. In this journey it has received many academic development projects and implemented successfully. Among them the institute has able to receive and manage the biggest engineering project of 20 million US Dollar during 1989-1999 to enhance the engineering education in Nepal as a whole with the assistance of donor agencies CIDA (Canada), SDC (Swiss), IDA (World Bank) etc. Although there is practically no infrastructure for development of robotics and automation in Nepal, the Institute of Engineering, T.U. has become the foremost leading institution devoted to developing and strengthening the field of robotics in Nepal. A Robotics Club was established in 2001 in the institute. Since then it has achieved following; Has built some robots mainly for sports and participated in some international competitions held in countries like, Japan (2002), Thailand(2003), and China (2005). In two international robot competitions in year 2004 and 2005, organized by IIT Bombay, India, it achieved third position with 500 dollars prize in 2004 and Best Idea and Implementation Award in 2005. Also presently it is engaged in developing some prototypes of industrial robot, obstacle sensing robot, escalator, and solar car.

1.6.4

Reasons for the selection of the target group(s) and identification of their needs and constraints. How does the Action contribute to the needs of the target group(s) and final beneficiaries?

Interestingly 5 partner institutes have been working in intelligent systems design for application in robotics. IITK and UUM have been collaborating for last one year while UB has been collaborating with the Mechanical Engineering Department of IITK since 2001, when an Asia-ITC grant was awarded to them. IIITH and IAT Bremen have been collaborating in assistive robotics as well. Although IAT, Bremen is ahead of other partners in assistive robotics research, coincidentally all partners have shown their interests to work united in this field of assistive robotics as everybodys expertise is complementary to each other. UB group who are very strong in evolutionary algorithms will take the lead in guiding research in evolutionary ensemble neural networks for performing complex Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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tasks as well as in evolvable hardware design for fault-tolerant control. IAT Bremen will lead the research in visual navigation while UUM will lead the research in BCI based natural communication between disabled and robotic system. IITK will lead the research in robot control and exo-skeleton while IIITH will lead in integrated navigation system. All these aspects of research is complementary for all partners who will gain expertise in this multidisciplinary field of assistive robotics. Simultaneously all five partners will assist IOE, Nepal to come up in robotic research so that the seed in Nepal is properly groomed to further disseminate the outcomes from this project to other universities in Nepal in the future.

1.7

Detailed description of activities(Maximum 9 Pages)

Title: A Collaborative Academic Program for Innovation in Intelligent Assistive Robotics

The project proposal includes activities in four main areas as discussed below:

1.7.1 Specialized Man-power Building Through Basic and Experimental Research in Assistive Robotics
Common Theme for the Ph.D. thesis work: As per a conservative estimate, 1 in 3500 of the worlds population may suffer from a neuro-muscular disability such as motor neurone disease (MND), and may have no means of communicating with the external world. This implies nearly 0.3 million people with severe movement disability in India alone. In addition, out of 21.9 million disabled people (Sensus 2001), 6.1 million suffer from movement disability. For providing independence and assisted living to such people, it is intended to investigate intelligent systems for devising an autonomous wheelchair and robotic arm combination which allows the user to interact through a brain-computer interface (BCI) as and when needed, while the combination performs activities of daily living autonomously through visual interaction with the environment. In this proposal we identify Masters and PhD thesis topics that would investigate the critical issues involved in the development of a low cost brain-operated visually navigated smart wheel-chair equipped with intelligent robotic arms. The first area to be investigated is an EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) operated asynchronously by the user, based on mapping of imagined-tasks related mental states to respective computer commands. Existing BCI systems are mainly driven synchronously under computer control and lack sufficient accuracy and robustness. Based on promising results obtained from the UUM partners recent BCI work, we believe, it is timely to investigate a user driven asynchronous BCI. Quantum neural network (QNN), pioneered by the Indian partner (IITK), has the unique ability to track time-varying probability-density-function associated with a stochastic signal. The project will therefore investigate modelling of stochastic EEG signals related with imagined-tasks using a QNN based feature extraction technique for enhanced classification accuracy and robustness. Simultaneously an enhanced type-2 fuzzy logic based classifier design for improved uncertainty handling for the EEG signal will be investigated, which will build on the UUM partners current promising work. The intended actions as interpreted by the BCI will be validated through a specially designed virtual keyboard, before forwarding to activate the wheelchair or the manipulator. Simultaneously a scene reader for reading visual map of the environment will be designed, using which the disabled person can point to the desired target. The visual tracking of a wheelchair acting as an automated guided vehicle (AGV) requires very accurate target position prediction (TPP). TPP of a moving target needs a thorough investigation since a real-time algorithm that would demand less computation while providing a greater accuracy is still elusive in the current literature. The position estimation algorithm has to be succeeded by a motion control algorithm that would ensure accurate target following of the AGV. The project will investigate an optimal path following algorithm using intelligent techniques which requires minimum examples during training. German partner (IAT) has recently proposed an algorithm that involves feedback structure in image-processing. Enhancement of this idea for TPP while comparing with methods such as unscented Kalman filter as well as quantum neural network pioneered by Indian partner will be investigated in detail. Safe navigation of the smart wheel chair in a dynamically changing environment is still a challenge. Traditionally the AI or algorithmic aspect of mobile robotics consists of five pillars: localization, mapping, exploration, planning and collision avoidance. A completely autonomous robot would want all these modules working together in tandem seamlessly performing their tasks. An integrated navigation system consisting of these Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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modules will be developed. The Indian partner (IIITH) has developed some landmark algorithm --- while UK partner (UUM) have been successful using optical-flow based obstacle avoidance scheme. Self-organised control architecture for redundant manipulator system interfaced with a visual-feedback system will be designed in such a way that it is robust, stable and smart. Model based control systems for redundant manipulators without visual feedback has already been tested in real-time. Visual motor coordination based manipulation schemes already exist for non-redundant systems in which the Indian Partner (IITK) has necessary expertise in both basic and experimental aspects. However, a visual motor coordination of a redundant manipulator system that simultaneously avoids obstacles while performing smart manipulative jobs is a challenge since the learning problem involves constrained optimization with multiple objective functions and a real-time execution capability. The expertise of the IITK group will be combined with novel methodology of feedback structure in image processing by the German partner to come up with a practical and efficient solution to the problem. In general, control algorithms for smart wheel chair and redundant manipulator are very challenging given the back-drop of time-varying complex system characteristics requiring on-line adaptation and constrained optimization. One novel way to solve this problem is to apply evolutionary techniques. Ensemble of neural networks can be trained to perform complex tasks through evolutionary approaches, so also evolvable hardware can be designed to develop fault-tolerant controls systems for the smart-wheel chair and redundant manipulator combination. In this regard, expertise of the UK partner (UB) will be shared by other partners to develop suitable evolvable control algorithm and control hardware for assistive robotics. In some cases of disability due to old age, disease or injury, people prefer muscular function augmentation through exo-skeletal devises so that they could perform the activities of daily living (ADL) using their own hands rather than an external robotic manipulator. Building on the expertise of the IITK partner, a PhD topic is identified to deal with the development of an exo-skeletal robotic device for supporting the hand of disabled persons. Its basic mechanical structure will consist of a mechanical hand that has three to four degrees of freedom at the wrist, and is attached to the arm below the elbow. The hand will consist of a two finger gripper that is force or position controlled. The two fingers would have two degrees-of-freedom (DOF) each and will be designed so that it can hold objects of daily use. The wearer will communicate with the hand by an advanced man machine interface consisting of sensors, actuators and a controller. In a nutshell, the thesis topics identified in this proposal is based on mutual expertise available among partners. 14 senior Ph.D. students and three masters students who are already working on the various aspects of assistive robotics will be given further assistance of joint supervision and complementary laboratory facilities for experimentation. Five new Ph.D. students will be funded through this Asia link program to provide joint supervision. It is envisioned that successful completion of these thesis topics will go a long way in assisting the disabled community while the outcome will further cater to various other generic needs in the field of assistive robotics and industrial automation. FWBI will act as an associate partner for transfer of technology from this joint collaborative effort to SMEs. We further elaborate below each thesis topic with detail description of joint supervision and exchange visits. Project Details: 1. A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) for natural communication Supervisors: Dr. G. Prasad, Prof. T.M McGinnity, UUM. Collaborator External Supervisor: Dr. L. Behera, IITK. Senior Ph.D. students: P. Herman, UUM spends 4 months at IITK, Ms. Indrani Kar,IITK spends 6 months at UUM. New Ph.D. Student: 1(UUM) student spends 12 months at IITK. For monitoring and joint supervision, GP will visit IITK for four months and LB will visit UUM for two months. This project will build on the expertise of the UUM partner to classify the brain imagery patterns so as to generate action commands as desired by the disable person. UUMs work on BCI design based on modelling of movement imagery (MI) related EEG time-series data using neural networks and self-organising fuzzy neural networks (SOFNNs) and classifier design using interval type-2 fuzzy logic will be revisited. Quantum Neural Network (QNN) approach to time-series data modelling as pioneered by the Indian Partner (IITK) will be further investigated. An algorithm using QNN to model MI-related EEG time-series data and obtain appropriate feature patterns will be developed. The performance of the QNN based predictive algorithm will be evaluated against other approaches. Simultaneously an enhanced type-2 fuzzy logic (T2FL) classifier will be devised and its performance will be evaluated against existing approaches as well as QNN based algorithms. Once a robust classifier is designed, then action commands have to be generated. An enhanced predictive virtual keyboard (VK) extending the current Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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work will be designed to create a system for validating the action commands before their eventual execution. A scene reader will be designed that will facilitate reading the details from a captured scene, so as to point to the desired target using BCI. Finally experiments with both able-bodied and disabled subjects to evaluate the capability of QNN/T2FL-based BCI configured to operate asynchronously the VK with scene reader and feedback for running the AGV and a manipulator will be conducted in UUM and IITK. 2. Visual tracking of a smart wheel-chair operated as an automated guided vehicle (AGV) Supervisor: Dr L. Behera, IIT, Kanpur Collaborator External Supervisors: Prof A. Graeser, IAT, Bremen, Dr. G. Prasad, UUM, UK and Dr. C.V. Jawahar, IIITH. Senior Ph.D. students: Swagat Kumar, IITK spends 4 months at UUM, A Browne, UUM student spends 4 months at IAT. New Ph.D student: 1(IITK) spends 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM. For joint supervision LB visits IAT and GP visits IAT for two months. The IAT group has developed great expertise in this area and collaborating partners will take advantage of this expertise through exchange visits. Visual tracking (VT) algorithms including target position prediction (TPP) and motion control algorithms for AGVs will be critically reviewed. An efficient visual tracking algorithm using unscented Kalman Filter will be developed and will be implemented on Patrolbot at IITK where senior Ph.D. students from IAT and UUM will also be involved. Simultaneously this algorithm will be tested on Friend II and Peoplebot in IAT and UUM respectively. A TPP algorithm using QNN will be developed and its performance will be evaluated with existing algorithms. The successful implementation of the algorithm on Patrolbot at IITK will be shared with collaborating partners. Feedback structure in image processing is a closed-loop digital image processing which has been successfully implemented by IAT group for visual tracking. This novel concept will be further investigated by the collaborative partners to improve the performance of the visual tracking algorithms. A combined AGV motor dynamics and camera model will be developed for efficient implementation of the motion control algorithm of the smart wheel chair. A novel adaptive motion control algorithm using SOFNN will then be developed. Real-time test and verification of BCI operated AGV on Peoplebot and wheelchair at UUM, Patrolbot at IITK and Friend II at IAT will be carried out. 3. Development of an integrated navigation system for a wheel chair like assistive robot Supervisors: Prof. Bipin Indurkhya, Dr. M. Krishna, IIITH Collaborator External Supervisors: Prof. A. Graeser, IAT Bremen, Prof. PK Kalra, IITK India Senior Ph.D. students: AK Pandey, IITH, a senior Ph.D student spends 4 months at IAT. New Ph.D. Student: 1(IIITH) student spends 12 months at IAT. For monitoring and joint supervision M. Krishna and Bipin Indurkhy visit IAT for two months. Traditionally the AI or algorithmic aspect of mobile robotics consists of five pillars: localization, mapping, exploration, planning and collision avoidance. A completely autonomous robot would want all these modules working together in tandem seamlessly performing their tasks. As a part of this project we would develop an integrated navigation system consisting of these modules. Based on a particular task at hand currently some or all of these modules will come into play. The research component of this effort includes actions taken by the robot based on visual and other sensory cues from patients, localization as well as obstacle avoidance in dynamic worlds especially if the wheel chair is moving on crowded floors or corridors traversed by other patients and visitors. In this regard the experience of IAT team is complementary to the experiences of IIITH team and IITK team . Thus a collaborative research in this regard will lead to development of efficient sensor based architecture and algorithms for a mobile robot for safe navigation. Although IIITH group will take benefit of the infrastructure facility available at IAT and IITK, it would like to procure a wheel chariot from Mobile Robots Inc that will cost USD 12,824. 4. Intelligent control of a redundant manipulator system using visual feedback Supervisors: Dr. Laxmidhar Behera, Dr. Ashish Dutta, IITK, India Collaborator External Supervisors: Prof. Axel Graeser, IAT, and Dr. G. Prasad, UUM. Senior Ph.D. students: AK Ray and S Kumar from IITK spend 6 months at UUM and IAT respectively, 1 IAT student visits IITK. Prof Graeser visits IITK for two months. Current research projects in redundant manipulators are addressing novel control techniques for redundancy resolution so that the manipulator can perform extra tasks in addition to the basic task of end-effector trajectory control, thus increasing the versatility of the manipulators in both assistive and industrial robotics. Both IAT and IITK groups have been working on manipulator control using visual feedback and both groups have 7DOF redundant manipulator systems. Manipulator control using visual feedback (VF) schemes will be critically analyzed Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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as applicable to redundant manipulators. The redundancy resolution schemes such as task-based configuration control will be investigated. Adaptive control schemes as applicable to a redundant manipulator will be derived. A visual feedback control scheme using fuzzy TS models will be developed. These algorithms will be implemented on a 7DOF power-cube robot both at IITK and IAT. UUM team will be involved in developing an embedded control system using FPGA for hardware implementation of the neural control algorithms. Self-organized map (SOM) based visual motor coordination schemes KSOM , PSOM, and QSOM as extended to redundant manipulator system where redundancy is resolved through constrained optimization will be investigated for developing an efficient algorithm. The feedback structure in image processing will be introduced to make visual-motor coordination scheme more robust and fast. These algorithms will be implemented in real-time on a 7DOF power cube robot both at IITK and IAT. The performance will be compared with Visual motor coordination using SOFNN algorithm and type-2 fuzzy system based learning algorithm . 5. Neural Network Ensemble Learning for Robotic Control Supervisors: Prof. Xin Yao, UB, UK. Collaborator External Supervisors: Dr. L. Behera, IITK, and Dr. AK Mishra, IOE Nepal. Senior Ph.D. students: Mr Awhan Patnaik, IITK will spend 6 months in UB, 1(UB student) will spend 4 months in IITK. Senior Masters student: Ramesh Chaudhary, IOE, Nepal, a senior M.Sc. student will spend 6 months at UB during his/her thesis work. For joint supervision LB visits UB for two months and XY visits IITK for two months. Many real-world problems are too large and too complex for a single neural network (NN) to solve alone. An NN ensemble consisting of several individual NNs has been shown to be able to improve NN's generalization performance . There have been much work in training NN ensembles , in mixtures of experts, and in various boosting and bagging methods. However, all these methods are used to adapt weights in an ensemble. The structure of the ensemble, e.g., the number of NNs in the ensemble, and the structure of individual NNs, e.g. the number of hidden nodes, are all designed manually and fixed during the training process. While manual design of NNs and ensembles might be appropriate for problems where rich prior knowledge and an experienced NN expert exist, it often involves a tedious trial-and-error process for many real-world problems because rich prior knowledge and experienced human experts are hard to get in practice. This project will study constructive ensemble learning algorithms, where the ensemble structure, NN structure and NN weights are trained automatically. In practice, a robot will often encounter new environments that it has never seen before, it is essential for the robot to learn incrementally and continuously. NN ensembles are well-suited to continuous incremental learning due to its population-based structure. This project will investigate this aspect. So there is a need for two graduate students in this project. In particular, the objectives of this project include: to implement and compare experimentally selected existing ensemble training algorithms on different robotic tasks; to analyse the above experimental results and study in detail the impact of different ensemble and NN structures on the results; to propose and study constructive ensemble learning algorithms, which can learn the structures as well as weights; to develop continuous incremental learning algorithms based on neural network ensembles; to adapt the new learning algorithm developed by the IITK partner for ensemble networks; to evaluate the proposed algorithms using real robots both at UB and IITK. 6. Evolutionary Design of Fault-Tolerant Control Systems Supervisor: Prof. Xin Yao, UB Collaborator External Supervisors: Dr. Laxmidhar Behera, IITK, Dr. AK Mishra, IOE Nepal. Senior PhD students: Mr. Ashutosh Dwivedi, IITK will spend 6 months in UB, 1 (UB student) will spend 4 months at IOE, Nepal. Senior Masters student: Suresh Gautam, IOE, Nepal, a senior M.Sc. student will spend 6 months in UB for his thesis work. For joint supervision, AKM visits UB for two months. Evolvable hardware (EHW) refers to one particular type of hardware whose architecture/structure and functions change dynamically and autonomously in order to improve its performance in performing certain tasks. The emergence of this new field in recent years has been influenced profoundly by the progresses in reconfigurable hardware and evolutionary computation. Traditional hardware is notorious for its inflexibility. It is impossible to change the hardware structure and its functions once it is made. However, most real world problems are not fixed. They change with time. In order to deal with these problems efficiently and effectively, different hardware Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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structures are necessary. EHW provides an ideal approach to make hardware "soft" by adapting the hardware structure to a problem dynamically. The primary aim of this project is to study the evolutionary design of fault-tolerant control system using our idea of negative correlation and artificial speciation . In addition to fault-tolerance, the evolutionary approach is also very good at discovering hardware designs that are hard to hit upon by human designers . This will be particularly appropriate for robotic control where the controller adapts its architecture and function automatically. In particular, the objectives of this project include: to study the evolutionary design of fault-tolerant circuits when redundancy is used; to study different diversity measures, especially negative correlation and artificial speciation, in evolving fault-tolerant circuits; to compare and analyse evolved circuits with conventionally designed ones; to develop evolvable controller for robots.

7. Developing an Open source Machine Vision Library for service and industrial robotic applications Supervisor: Prof. A. Graeser, IAT Collaborator External Supervisors: Dr. Ashish Dutta, IITK, Dr. L. Behera, IITK, Dr. G. Prasad, UUM, and Dr. B. Indurkhya, IIITH.. Senior Ph.D. student: KS Vuppala, IAT spends 4 months at IIITH. New Ph.D. student: 1(IAT student) spends 12 months at IIITK. There have been different open source machine libraries existent that are capable of providing low, middle and higher level image processing functionalities . What is missing is a general environment for researchers and educationalists in being able to use the algorithms being or already developed by other peers who work in the research field of machine vision. This problem is addressed by developing an interface to all the developed algorithms for various industrial, service and assistive robotics applications. All the developed modules are to be accumulated and made available via an interactive interface to the entire user community. By providing such an interface, even beginners would be able to start using some of the common and existing modules of Machine Vision. To develop such a generic open source interface in the various fields related to Machine Vision could be a huge task. Hence, the main intention of this project is to develop common modules with in various sectors of Machine Vision like 3D re-construction, 3-D visualization, visually guided robot control, visual servoing and the integration of multiple sensor data. Modules will also support additional functionalities like robust image processing, feature extraction, and object recognition methods. The modules provided by the interface aim at reducing the preparation time for setting up new tasks or projects in the field of Machine Vision. This can be attained when the user exploits the existing modules for solving different specific tasks while trying to solve his main problem. The online version of the system enables the researchers and users from different geographic locations, to be able to experience a click and test mechanism. With in this cooperative program, the mentioned Machine Vision Interface can incorporate the algorithms and solutions from the partner institutions. Apart from the knowledge sharing goals, the availability of such an interface would also help in speeding up the training and exercise activities for developing specialised personnel in this field of research. 8. Robotic Perception exploiting cognitive neuroscience Supervisors: Dr. L P. Maguire, Prof. TM McGinnity (UUM) Collaborator External Supervisors: Drs M. Krishna and CV Jawahar. Senior Ph.D. student: P.Vance, UUM spends 4 months at IIITH. Senior Masters student: 1(IIITH ) student spends 6 months at UUM. Dr. M. Krishna will visit UUM for two months for joint supervision. Cognitive neuroscience refers to the examination of the relationship between cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, learning and memory and the brain areas and processes associated with these cognitive abilities. The Intelligent Systems Engineering laboratory has concentrated its research efforts on taking such inspiration from biology to develop and refine computational architectures that mimic the capability of the human brain. Such theoretical work is of particular relevance to assistive robotics as it aims to embody the robot with an intelligence capability that mimics human behaviour. The principal aim of the project is to exploit research in cognitive neuroscience to develop intelligent systems engineering technological approaches in the production of a multi-sensory, task specific adaptable perception system. The research will investigate designing intelligent systems to realise the multi-modal sensory interactions Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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for object recognition, constrained by varying environmental conditions such as light and background noise. The research will be demonstrated by application to autonomous robotic control. The project will extend the collaborative research results of the EU funded project Sensemaker http://isel.infm.ulst.ac.uk/sensemaker.html In this proposal the experimental research will validate the higher cognitive models from psychophysical research paradigms evaluated in the Sensemaker project. These models implement dynamic rules of cross-modal integration, activity and time-dependent algorithms for internal prediction, goal directed attention, and transitions between dominant or convergent sensory modalities according to changing environmental parameters. From an intelligent systems engineering perspective they provide an opportunity to research the design of intelligent machines and will lead to a new generation of dynamically adaptable, flexible architectures with multi-competent working ranges, in some ways resembling the parallel processing capacities and perception capabilities of the human brain. An exemplar application for such work is assistive robots as such implementations will embody the robot with an intelligent capability to enable it to make informed decisions from a range of integrated inputs much like a biological system. In practical terms the research will involve consideration of an appropriate host embedded system using FPGA devices to emulate the inherent flexibility. 9. Development of an exoskeletal robot for human hand support mechanical design, sensor fusion, and control Supervisors: Drs Ashish Dutta and L. Behera, IITK. Collaborator External Supervisors: Drs. M. Krishna, G. Prasad and Prof. A. Graeser New Ph.D. students: 1(IITK) student spends 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM. Ashish Dutta visits IAT for two months for joint supervision. In order to improve the lives of persons with disability due to old age, disease or injury through human muscular function augmentation, several types of exoskeletal devises have been built which can be classified into two main groups. The first group is for helping the disabled perform daily actions like eating, walking etc., while the second group is mainly for enhancing human capabilities (e.g. lifting heavy loads etc.). This PhD project proposal aims to deal with the development of an exo-skeletal robot for supporting the hand of disabled persons. Its basic mechanical structure consists of a mechanical hand that has three to four degrees of freedom at the wrist, and is attached to the arm below the elbow. The hand consists of a two finger gripper that is force or position controlled. The two fingers would have two degrees-of-freedom (DOF) each and will be designed so that it can hold objects of daily use. The wearer will communicate with the hand by an advanced man machine interface consisting of sensors, actuators and a controller. The hand may be controlled by tapping the EMG signals from the wearers muscles for the actuation of motors, or through an interface directly actuated by the wearer. Other methods of actuation like voice actuation, pneumatic actuation, and thought-based actuation through BCI can also be investigated. Touch sensors, force sensors and pressure sensors will provide information about the interaction with the environment. The designed arm may be a replacement of a disabled persons arm or to provide support to a person with impaired muscular functions. It may also be used in rehabilitation of stroke patients, if they make use of their paralysed hand in a co-operative arrangement in which mechanical assembly provides necessary reinforcement to the existing strength in the paralysed hand and also command the movement through thought/movement imagery and thus exercising the sensory motor cortex area. The total project contains elements of mechanical design, sensor fusion, advanced control and human behaviour modelling. At the end of these collaborative research studies, we will have definite idea how to communicate to an intelligent robotic system using BCI system in conjunction with a virtual keyboard and a scene reader. These works are also expected to facilitate visual tracking of both static and moving targets by a smart wheelchair while automatically avoiding obstacles. It will also provide expertise about how to integrate an exoskeletal device or a manipulator system with the wheel-chair so that the user can independently carry out most the activities of daily living (ADL).

1.7.2 Development of Innovative Interaction Systems

1. Synchronous e-learning system Joint Supervisors: Dr. YN Singh (IITK), and Dr. AK Mishra (IOE, Nepal) Man-power support: 1 Project Assistant Building on the current work in IITK, a synchronous e-learning system among universities in EU, India and Nepal will be established. Some of the post graduate level courses will be augmented through special lectures delivered by the experts in partner-institutes. During the first international workshop, a new course module on Softcomputing Applications in Assistive Robotics will be formalized and will be floated as a new course module at IITK. This course module will be augmented by special lectures delivered from UUM, UB and IAT. Another postgraduate level course module on Intelligent Assistive Robotics will be formalized during the 2nd International workshop. This course module will also be augmented by special lectures delivered from IITK, UUM and IAT. Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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2. Tele-robotics and performing experiments on remote physical hardware via internet Joint Supervisors: Dr. YN Singh (IITK), Prof. Graeser, IAT, Germany Man-power support: 1 Project assistant YN Singh will visit IAT for one month and UUM for one month to monitor the work of synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. IAT, Bremen, IIT, Kanpur and UUM have very good experimental platforms for research in assistive robotics such as brain-computer interface system, smart wheel chairs, redundant manipulators and visual control. In general experiments in assistive robotic system require very costly equipments and every University may not have all the facilities. For example, to develop a brain-operated smart wheel chair, we need to combine facilities of UUM and IITK through tele-robotics so that researchers in both the places can have access to necessary equipments for experimentation. In addition, many Asian Universities do not have proper infrastructure for robotics experiments. Thus it is proposed to connect the labs of all partners associated with this proposal so that each researcher can execute his algorithm in a remote physical hardware situated in another lab, via the Internet, in real time. Also investigations will be made if one can perform experiment in two different set-ups situated in two different places. For example, it would be interesting to see if a UUM researcher can interface the BCI system located at UUM with the smart wheel chair located at IIT, Kanpur. This project if becomes successful will usher a new era in training and developing specialized man-power in assistive robotics.

1.7.3 Logistics Support to IOE, Nepal in Robotic Research

1. Robotics Education in IOE Nepal Since IOE, Nepal has just entered into robotic research; the group needs academic and research support. A special course module on Robotics and Automation will be devised during the 1st international workshop. Dr. Arabinda K. Mishra, IOE will teach this course at IOE with the support from IITK and IIITH. A couple of faculty members from IITK will deliver lectures for one week each at IOE. 2. Assisting IOE to set up a Robotics Laboratory Following equipments will be procured:

1. A mobile robot Patrolbot from Active-media Robotics: USD 41 035=Euro 33,116 2. A 4DOF power-cube robot from AMTEC, Berlin: Euro 20,000 3. Interesting control experimental modules: Inverted Pendulum and Mechatronics Control Kit from Quanser:
Euro 3000 each.

1.7.4 Long-Term Sustainability by Building Partnership with FWBI, Bremen and Invacare UK limited
FWBI, Bremen is an enterprise that transfers technology from academia to SMEs and provides feedback about the need of SMEs to academia. FWBI, Bremen has agreed to closely associate with this partnership to establish a long term contact with some interested SMEs. In this regard, this partnership has been successful to motivate Invacare UK limited, a leading manufacturer in smart wheel chair and assistive robotic aids, to efficiently tap the project outcome. In fact, Invacare has already donated a smart wheel chair to UUM, one of the partners, for robotic research. We expect that the present partnership will sustain in long run through this arrangement. References [1]. Coyle, DH, Prasad, G, McGinnity TM, A Time-Series Prediction Approach to Extracting Features for a BrainComputer Interface, IEEE Trans. On Neural systems and rehabilitation engineering, 2005, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 461-467. [2]. Prasad, G., Herman, P., McGinnity T.M., Critical Observations on Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Approach to Uncertainty Handling in a Brain-Computer Interface Design, Proc. 11 th Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty (IPMU) International Conference 2006, Paris, France, pp 1356-1363. [3]. Upadhyaya, S, Fast Predictive Virtual Keyboard, BEng project report, Faculty of Eng., Ulster University, UK, 2006. [4]. Neuper, C, Schere, R, Reiner, M, Pfurtscheller, G, Imagery of Motor Actions: Differential Effects of Kinesthetic and Visual-motor Mode of Imagery in Single-Trial EEG, Cognitive Brain Research, Vol. 25(2005), pp 668-677. [5]. Coyle, DH, Prasad, G and McGinnity, TM, Enhancing Autonomy and Computational Efficiency of the SelfOrganizing Fuzzy Neural Network for a Brain-Computer Interface, Proc. 2006 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Canada, pp 2270- 2277 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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[6]. Neupera, C, Mullerb GR, . Kublerc, A, Birbaumerc, N, Pfurtschellera, G, Clinical application of an EEG-based braincomputer interface: a case study in a patient with severe motor impairment, Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 114 (2003), pp 399409. [7]. Schlogl, A, Vidaurre, C, Pfurtscheller G, Assessing non-stationarities in BCI data, BCI 2005 Workshop, Rensellaville, NY, USA.. [8]. Leng G, Prasad G, McGinnity TM, "An On-line Algorithm for Creating Self-organising Fuzzy Neural Networks", Neural Networks, Elsevier, 2004, Vol. 17, pp 1477-1493. [9]. C. Martens, N. Ruchel, O. Lang, O. Ivlev, and A Graeser, A FRIEND for assisting handicapped people, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine,Volume 8, Issue 1, March 2001 Page(s):57 65 [10]. Richard C. Simpson, Smart wheelchairs: A literature review, Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, Vol. 42, Number 4, Pages 423-436, 2005 [11]. Ren C. Luo and Tse M. Chen, Autonomous mobile target tracking system based on grey-fuzzy control algorithm, IEEE Trans Industrial Electronics, Vol. 47, No. 4, 2000 [12]. N. Bredeche, Z. Shi, and J-D Zucker, Perceptual learning and abstraction in machine learning: An application to autonomous robotics, IEEE Trans SMC-Part C, Vol 36, No 2, 2006 [13]. A. Arleo, F. Smeraldi and W. Gerstner, Cognitive navigation based on nonuniform Gabor space sampling, unsupervised growing networks and reinforcement learning, IEEE Trans on Neural Network, Vol 15, No. 3 2004 [14]. T. Dutta and G. R. Fernie, Utilization of ultrasound sensors for anti-collision systems of powered wheelchairs. IEEE Trans. on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol 13, No. 1, MARCH 2005, pp 24-32. [15]. N.P. Papanikolopous, P.K. Khosla, and T. Kanade. Visual tracking of a moving target by a camera mounted on a robot: A combination of control and vision. In IEEE Trans. Robotics and Automation, 9(1):14-35, February 1993. [16]. J.W. Lee. M.S. Kim, and I.S. Kweon. A Kalman filter based visual tracking algorithm for an object moving in 3D, Proceedings IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. Intelligent robots and systems, Vol. 1, pp 342-347, 1995. [17]. E.A. Wan and R. van der Merwe,The unscented Kalman filter in Kalman Filtering and Neural Networks, Edited by Simon Haykin, pp 221-280, 2001. [18]. Laxmidhar Behera, Indrani Kar and Avshalom C. Elitzur, Recurrent Quantum Neural Network Model to Describe Eye Tracking of Moving Target, Foundations of Physics Letters, Vol. 18, No. 4, 357-370, 2005 [19]. Laxmidhar Behera, Indrani Kar and A.C. Elitzur, Chapter 9: Recurrent Quantum Neural Network and Its Applications, in The Emerging Physics of Consciousness, Jack Tuszynski (Ed), Springer Verlag, 2005 [20]. Laxmidhar Behera and Bharat Sundaram, Stochastic filtering and and Speech Enhancement using a Recurrent Quantum Neural Network, Proceedings Int. Conf. Int. Sensors and Inf. Processing, ICISIP-2004, Chennai, 165-170. [21]. Laxmidhar Behera and Indrani Kar, Quantum Stochastic Fitering, IEEE SMC 2005, Hawaii, Oct 10-12, 2005 [22]. D. Ristic, S.K. Vuppala, and A. Graeser; Feedback Control for Improvement of Image Processing: An Application of Recognition of Characters on Metallic Surfaces, IEEE ICVS Computer Vision Systems, 04-07 Jan. 2006 [23]. I. Volosyak, O. Kouzmitcheva, D. Ristic, and A. Graeser, Improvement of visual perceptual capabilities by feedback structures for robotic system FRIEND, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part C, Volume 35, Issue 1, Feb. 2005 Page(s):66 - 74 [24]. R. Fierro and F.L. Lewis, Control of a nonholonomic mobile robot using neural networks, IEEE Trans Neural Networks, Volume 9, Issue 4, July 1998 Page(s):589 600 [25]. T. Fukao a, H. Nakagawa and N. Adachi, Adaptive tracking control of a nonholonomic mobile robot, IEEE Trans Robotics and Automation, Volume 16, Issue 5, Oct. 2000 Page(s):609 615 [26]. O. Prenzel, J. Feuser, and A. Graeser, Rehabilitation robot in intelligent home environment software architecture and implementation of a distributed system, 9th Int. Conf on Rehabilitation Robotics, ICORR-2005, 28 June-1 July 2005 Page(s):530 535 [27]. Volosyak, O. Ivlev, and A. Graeser; Rehabilitation robot FRIEND II - the general concept and current implementation, 9th Int. Conf on Rehabilitation Robotics, ICORR-2005, 28 June-1 July 2005 Page(s):540 544 [28]. J. Feuser, O. Ivlev and A, Graeser, Collision prevention for rehabilitation robots with mapped virtual reality, 9th Int. Conf on Rehabilitation Robotics, ICORR-2005, 28 June-1 July 2005 Page(s):461 - 464 [29]. A K Pandey and K Madhava Krishna, Integrating features onto an occupancy grid for sonar based safe mapping, IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) 2007 accepted [30]. Rakesh Goyal, K Madhava Krishna and Shivudu Bhuvanagiri, Sensor based localization of Mobile Robots by Exploration and Selection of Best Direction, Robio: IEEE Intl conference on robotics and bio-mimetics 2006, accepted [31]. Siddharth Sanan, Darshan Santani, K Madhava Krishna and Henry Hexmoor, Extension of Reeds and Shepp Paths for a Robot with Front and Rear Wheel Steer, Proc of ICRA, 2006 [32]. K Madhava Krishna and Henry Hexmoor, A T Step Ahead Optimal Tracking Algorithm for a Surveillance Based Sensor Network, In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot and Systems, Pages 1840-1845, Edmonton, CA 22 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page

[33]. K. Madhava Krishna and Henry Hexmoor Reactive Collision Avoidance of Multiple Moving Agents by
Cooperation and Conflict Propagation, Proc. of ICRA, (IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation), New Orleans, April 2004 [34]. Madhava Krishna, Srinivas CHellappa, and H. Hexmoor, 2005. Reactive Navigation of Multiple Moving Agents by Collaborative Resolution of Conflicts, Journal of Robotic Systems, 22(5), 249-269, Wiley Periodicals, Inc [35]. K. Madhava Krishna, R. Alami and T. Simeon, Safe Proactive Plans and their Execution, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 54 (2006) 244-255 (available online at www.sciencedirect.com) November 2005 [36]. I. J. Nagrath, L. Behera, Madhav Krishna and K. D. Rajsekar, Real-time navigation of a mobile robot using Kohonen network, 8th International conference on advanced Robotics, ICAR'97, pp. 459-466, Monterery, CA, USA. [37]. Madhav Krishna, Deepak Rajsekar, I.J. Nagrath, and L. Behera , On a fast optimal path planning algorithm for mobile robots, International symposium on intelligent Robotics, CAIR, Bangalore, January 1998 [38]. K Madhava Krishna and Prem K Kalra, Detection Tracking and Avoidance of Multiple Dynamic Objects, Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, Kluwer Academic, pp. 371-408(33), 2002. [39]. K Madhava Krishna and Prem K Kalra, When does the Robot Perceive a Dynamic Object, Journal of Robotic Systems, John Wiley, vol. 19, no. 2, 2002. [40]. JohnT. Feddema, C.S.George Lee O. Robert Mitchell, Model-Based Visual Feedback Control for a Hand-Eye Coordinated Robotic System, IEEE Computer, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp21-31,1992 [41]. Kawai,H. Murao,T. Fujita,M. Passivity-based dynamic visual feedback control with uncertainty of camera coordinate frame, Proceeding American Control Conference 2005, Vol 5, pp 3701- 3706 [42]. S. Alfs, O. Ivlev, C. Martens, and A. Graeser; Simulation tool for kinematic configuration control technology for dexterous robots, 25th IEEE conference IECON '99 Proceedings, Volume 1, 29 Nov.-3 Dec. 1999 Page(s):430 - 435 [43]. O. Lang and A. Graeser; Visual control of 6 DOF robots with constant object size in the image by means of zoom camera, 25th IEEE conference IECON '99 Proceedings, Volume 3, 29 Nov.-3 Dec. 1999, Pages 13421347. [44]. H. Seraji, M.K. Long and T.S. Lee, Motion control of 7DOF arms: The configuration control approach, IEEE Trans Robotics and Automation, Vol. 9, No. 2, 125-139,1993 [45]. Anjan K Ray, Mayank Agrawal and Laxmidhar Behera,Kinematic Control of Robot Manipulators using Visual Feedback, IEEE Int. Symposium on Intelligent Control (ISIC), 2006, Munich, Germany. [46]. L. Behera, M. Gopal, and Santanu Chaudhury, On adaptive control of a robot manipulator using inversion of its neural emulator, IEEE Trans. On Neural Networks, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 1401-1414, nov. 1996. [47]. L. Behera, Santanu Chaudhury and M. Gopal, A hybrid neuro-adaptive trajectory tracking of a robot manipulator, IEE proceedings Control Theory and Applications, vol. 143, no. 3, pp. 270-275, May 1996 [48]. Prem Kumar P., Indrani Kar and Laxmidhar Behera Variable gain controllers for nonlinear systems using T-S Fuzzy model, (To be published) IEEE Trans Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B, 2006 [49]. Prem Kumar, Indrani Kar and Laxmidhar Behera, Intelligent Control Schemes for a Redundant Manipulator, 2nd Indian Int. Conf on Artilficial Intelligence, Pune, India, 20-22, December 2005 [50]. L. Behera and Nandagopal K., A hybrid neural control scheme for visuo-motor coordination, IEEE Control System Magazine, vol. 19, no. 4, August 1999, pp. 34-41 [51]. L. Behera and G. Prema Krishna, A neural controller based binocular vision system for object tracking, IETE Journal of Research, vol. 45, no. 1, 1999, pp. 63- 72. [52]. L. Behera and G. Prema Krishna, Implementation of hand-eye co-ordinated tracking mechanism using cognachrome vision system, Paritantra, A Journal of System Science and Engineering, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 37-42, 1999 [53]. Jrg Walter and Helge Ritter, Rapid learning with parametrized self-organizing maps, Neurocomputing, 12:131-153, 1996. [54]. Nimit Kumar and Laxmidhar Behera, Visual Motor Coordination Using a Quantum Clustering Based Neural Control Scheme, Neural Processing Letters,Volume 20: 11-22, 2004. [55]. Y. Liu, X. Yao and T. Higuchi, ``Evolutionary Ensembles with Negative Correlation Learning,'' IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 4(4):380-387, November 2000. [56]. Y. Liu and X. Yao, ``Ensemble learning via negative correlation,'' Neural Networks, 12(10):1399-1404, December 1999. [57]. Y. Liu and X. Yao, ``Simultaneous training of negatively correlated neural networks in an ensemble,'' IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, 29(6):716-725, December 1999. [58]. Laxmidhar Behera, Swagat Kumar and Awhan Patnaik, On adaptive learning rate that guarantees convergence in feed-forward networks, IEEE Trans Neural Networks, Vol. 17, No. 5 September 2006 [59]. X. Yao and T. Higuchi, ``Promises and Challenges of Evolvable Hardware,'' IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C, 29(1):87-97, February 1999. [60]. X. Yao, ``Following the path of evolvable hardware,'' Communications of the ACM, 42(4):47-49, April 1999. Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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[61]. X. Yao and Y. Liu, ``Getting Most Out of Evolutionary Approaches,'' Proc. of the 2002 NASA/DoD
Conference on Evolvable Hardware (EH'02), A. Stoica, J. Lohn, R. Katz, D. Keymeulen and R. Zebulum (eds.), IEEE Computer Society, pp.8-14, July 2002. [62]. T. Schnier and X. Yao, ``Using negative correlation to evolve fault-tolerant circuits,'' Proc of the 5th International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES'2003), 17th - 20th March 2003, Trondheim, Norway, pp.35-46. [63]. T. Schnier, X. Yao and P. Liu, ``Digital Filter Design Using Multiple Pareto Fronts,'' Proceedings of the Third NASA/DoD Workshop on Evolvable Hardware, pp.136-145, IEEE Computer Society Press, July 2001. [64]. Intel Corporation, http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/opencv/. Open Source Computer Vision Library [65]. MathWorks, http://www.mathworks.com/products/image/. Image processing toolbox [66]. ARToolworks, http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/. Augmented reality toolkit [67]. Point Grey Research, http://www.ptgrey.com/products/bumblebee2/. Stereo vision products

1.8 Methodology (MAX 4 pages)

1.8.1 Methods of implementation and reasons for the proposed methodology.
Five main activities are as follows: Human resource development through advanced study and collaborative research in intelligent assistive robotics. Synchronism in Assistive robotics education between EU and Asia through synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. Logistic support to IOE Nepal for robotics education. Visibility of EU-Asia collaborative efforts through international workshops, dissemination of results through conference proceedings and journal publications as well as road shows. Exchange of ideas between academia and SMEs with the help of FWBI, Breman and Invacare UK as associate partners.

Detailed implementation methodology for each action is further elaborated:

Human Resource Development

15 faculty members from 6 partner institutes will supervise jointly 22 PhD and masters students while these students will have the opportunity to avail best research and experimental facilities. We have identified following NINE broad thesis topics:

1. A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) for natural communication: Dr. G. Prasad, and Prof. TM McGinnity,
UUM and Dr. L. Behera, IIT Kanpur will jointly supervise this thesis work for one senior Ph.D student from UUM, one senior PhD student Ms Indrani Kar, IITK and one new Ph.D. student from UUM. The senior UUM PhD student will visit IITK for 4 months, Ms Indrani Kar will visit UUM for 6 months while the new UUM PhD student will visit IITK for 12 months. For monitoring and joint supervision, GP will visit IITK for four months and LB will visit UUM for two months Visual tracking of a smart wheel-chair operated as an automated guided vehicle (AGV): Dr L. Behera, IIT, Kanpur, Prof A. Graeser, IAT, Bremen, Dr. G. Prasad, UUM, UK and Dr. C.V. Jawahar, IIIT, Hyderabad will jointly supervise one senior PhD student Swagat Kumar, IITK, one senior PhD student A. Browne from UUM and one new Ph.D student from IITK. Swagat Kumar, IITK will spend 4 months at UUM and UUM student spends 4 months at IAT. The new IITK PhD student spends 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM. For joint supervision LB visits IAT and GP visits IAT for two months. Development of an integrated navigation system for a wheel chair like assistive robot: Prof. Bipin Indurkhya, Dr. M. Krishna, IIITH, Prof. A. Graeser, IAT Bremen and Prof. PK Kalra, IITK India will jointly supervise one senior PhD student, IIITH and one new PhD student, IIITH. Senior IIITH PhD student spends 4 Page
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3.

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4.

5.

6.

7.

months at IAT and the new IIITH PhD student spends 12 months at IAT. For monitoring and joint supervision M. Krishna visits IAT for two months so also Bipin Indurkhya visits IAT for two months. Intelligent control of a redundant manipulator system using visual feedback: Dr. L. Behera, Dr. A. Dutta, IITK, India, Prof. Axel Graeser, IAT, Bremen, Germany, and Dr. G. Prasad, UUM will supervise two senior PhD students AK Ray and S. Kumar from IITK and one senior Ph.D student from IAT. AK Ray spends 6 months at UUM and S. Kumar spends 6 months at IAT. The senior PhD student from IAT will visit IITK for four months. Prof Graeser visits IITK for two months. Neural Network Ensemble Learning for Robotic Control: Prof. Xin Yao, UB, UK, Dr. L. Behera, IITK, and Dr. AK Mishra, IOE Nepal will jointly supervise one senior PhD student Mr A. Patnaik, IITK, one senior PhD student from UB and one senior masters student from IOE Nepal. A. Patnaik will spend 6 months in UB, the senior UB student will spend 4 months in IITK and the senior masters student from IOE, Nepal will spend 6 months in UB. For joint supervision LB visits UB for two months and XY visits IITK for two months. Evolutionary Design of Fault-Tolerant Control Systems: Prof. Xin Yao, UB, Dr. Laxmidhar Behera, IITK, and Dr. AK Mishra, IOE Nepal will jointly supervise Mr. Ashutosh Dwivedi, IIT Kanpur, one senior Ph.D. student from UB and one senior masters student Suresh Gautam, IOE. Mr Ashutosh Dwivedi will spend 6 months in UB, the senior UB Ph.D student will spend 4 months at IOE, Nepal and Suresh Gautam from IOE will spend 6 months at UB. AK Mishra will visit UB for two months for joint supervision. Developing an Open source Machine Vision Library for service and industrial robotic applications : Drs. A. Graeser, Ashish Dutta, L. Behera, G. Prasad, Bipin Indurkhya, and CV Jawahar will guide senior Ph.D student SK Vuppala, IAT and one new PhD student from IAT. KS Vuppala will spend 4 months at IIITH and the new Ph.D. student from IAT will spend 12 months at IITK.

8. Robotic Perception exploiting cognitive neuroscience: Dr. L Maguire, and Prof. TM McGinnity (UUM), and
Dr. M Krishna will jointly supervise a senior PhD student from UUM and a senior Masters student from IIITH. Senior UUM Ph.D. student P. Vance spends 4 months at IIITH and the senior Masters student Ms Jyotika Bahuguna from IIITH will spend 6 months at UUM. M Krishna will visit UUM for two months.

9. Development of an exoskeletal robot for human hand support mechanical design, sensor fusion, and
control: Drs Ashish Dutta , L. Behera, M. Krishna, G. Prasad and Prof. A. Graeser will jointly supervise one
new PhD student from IITK. The new Ph.D student from IITK will spend 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM. Ashish Dutta visits IAT for two months for joint supervision.

Synchronism in Assistive robotics education between EU and ASIA through synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics
As said earlier that one of our important objectives is to bring in a synchronism in assistive robotics education using synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. Dr. YN Singh, IITK will coordinate these activities through proper design of communication protocols for live broadcast of lectures and remote experimentation. Two project assistants will be employed. Dr. YN Singh will visit UUM, UB and IAT in this regard to ensure that all the partner institutes are well-connected using the internet communication channel. Some of the postgraduate courses in every partner institute will be augmented by guest lectures from experts in other partner-institutes.

Logistic support to IOE Nepal for robotics education

IITK will coordinate the minimal infrastructure development at IOE for robotic education. During the 1 st international workshop a course module on Robotics and Automation will be formalized for IOE, Nepal. Dr. AK Mishra will teach this course at IOE which will be initially augmented through guest lectures from partner institutes using eeducation.

Visibility of EU-Asia collaborative efforts through international workshops, dissemination of results through conference proceedings and journal publications as well as road shows
The visibility of EU-Asia link partnership is very important for its sustainability. The project will kick-start in the first month with an International workshop at IITK where all partners will interact with international experts. This interaction will help to fine-tune PhD thesis topics that would have a more visionary impact on technological development in assistive robotics. Publications from Ph.D works will be disseminated through international conference and journal publications. The second international workshop will be organized to evaluate the overall outcome of the project with the help of international experts and a methodology will be worked out for sustaining this collaboration. Finally road shows will be conducted in EU and Asia to demonstrate successful prototypes that will highlight the importance of Asia-Link programme.

Exchange of ideas between academia and SMEs

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FWBI Breman and Invacare UK have been involved in this project as associate partners which will constantly endeavour for exchange of ideas and transfer of technology from EU-Asia partnership to SMEs. This would help this collaboration to be sustained in a long run. In this regard, FWBI and Invacare representatives will attend two international workshops and road shows.

1.8.2 Where the action is the prolongation of a previous action, explain how the action is intended to build on the results of this previous action. Not Applicable

1.8.3

Where the action is part of a larger programme, explain how it fits or is coordinated with this programme. Please specify the potential synergies with other initiatives, in particular from the EC.

Not Applicable

1.8.4 Procedures for follow up and internal/external evaluation.

A major outcome of the proposed project is to produce 5 new doctorates in the area of assistive robotics and to assist 14 existing PhD students as well as 3 masters students through joint supervision under the EU-Asia link. There exists a well-tested model in every university/institute to check the progress of PhD students. For instance at UUM, the first assessment takes place after 3 months and the second after 9 months. The outcome of the first assessment is mainly advisory in nature. In the second assessment, a decision is made about the continuation of the PhD program based on the progress made by the student so far. At the end of 2 years, students present a seminar on their work and finally their thesis is examined by a board of examiner which includes an external examiner invited from outside of University of Ulster. At IITK, a strict monitoring process for a PhD student in terms of comprehensive examination, state-of-the-art seminar and open seminar are already in place. Present work plan will go through further critical assessment during the first work-shop where international experts in the area of assistive robotics and soft-computing will be invited. Suggestions and guidance of these experts will be incorporated in the work-plan to achieve desired research objectives. Quarterly technical reports based on the research outcomes will be circulated among these experts to get regular feedback. The second workshop will be held during the completion stage to assess the overall outcome of the research with the help of same set of international experts. In addition, two annual meetings will be held at IAT (1st year) and IIITH (2nd year) to assess the progress so that corrective measures can be taken to successfully carry out the objectives as outlined in this proposal.

1.8.5

Description of the role and participation in the action of the various actors (local partner, target groups, local authorities, etc.), and the reasons for which these roles have been assigned to them.

IITK will supervise students in the area of visual-motor coordination using various SOM schemes for redundant manipulator system, visual tracking of the Patrolbot and development of an exo-skeleton robot since lead researchers are working in this area. IITK will share its expertise in quantum neural network and neural adaptive control algorithms with other partners. IIITH will supervise students in the area of integrated navigation system for smart wheel chairs as the lead researchers have expertise in this area. IAT has been in forefront of research in assistive robotics which includes visual navigation and dexterous manipulation using visual feedback. Thus IAT will supervise students in this area while sharing the expertise with other partners. UUM has been working in the area of BCI based natural communication system and will thus guide students in this area. UUM will share their expertise in this area with other partners.

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UB has been leading research in evolutionary computation. Thus UB will supervise students in the area of evolutionary ensemble network and evolvable hardware for robotic applications.

1.8.6

Team proposed for implementation of the action (by function: there is no need to include the names of individuals here).

Each partner will take the responsibility for the progress of the Ph.D and masters students at their work place. IITK will take the responsibility for the 1st workshop while UUM will take the responsibility for the second workshop. IAT, IIITH and IOE will take the responsibility of conducting 1 st, 2nd and 3rd annual meetings respectively. IITK will coordinate the logistic support to IOE, Nepal. Dr. YN Singh, IITK will coordinate the activities in relation to synchronous e-learning and tele-robotics. UUM, UK will coordinate the road-show in UK, IAT will coordinate the road-show in Germany while IITK will coordinate road-show program in India and Nepal. FWBI will take the responsibility of transfer of technology from this partnership collaboration to SMEs. IITK will take the responsibility of overall progress of the project

1.8.7

Main means proposed for implementation of the action (equipment, tools).

IAT, Bremen has been pioneer in assistive robotic research through projects such as Friend I and Friend II. This institute has excellent facilities for research in Mobile Robotics and Redundant manipulator system. Simultaneously experimental facilities for visual servoing applications are in place to test advanced algorithms. The IITK group is also well equipped with advanced experimental set ups such as a IRB140 6DOF manipulator with stereo vision system, SGI Prism server for visualization, a 7 DOF power-cube robot (redundant manipulator), Patrolbot for experimentation as automated guided vehicle (AGV) and many prototypes of humanoid robots such as static and dynamic walkers. The institute has a very advanced control laboratory, a centre for mechatronics (Robotics center) and excellent computational facilities to carry out the proposed work. In UUM, BCI projects are supported by a state-of-the-art EEG-based BCI system bought from Guger Technologies OEG, Austria. The system is installed in a screened room, which is part of the advanced experimental facility of ISEL at the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems. It has 56 EEG channels and 8 electromyogram (EMG) channels interfaced to a high power industrial PC for Bio-signal processing under the MATLAB environment. The system also has an additional stimulation unit for interfacing both analogue and digital devices such as prosthetic limbs. A mobile BCI experimental setup is also available for on-site experimentation outside the lab in normal working environment. ISEL also has a well-resourced mobile robotics laboratory. It has a computer-controlled power wheel-chair and a robotic manipulator, Peoplebot, a fleet of Khepera robots. The group has recently procured a high specification FPGA platform (with an associated cost of 250K) that will enable the implementation of very large scale neural networks that would have performance comparable to sub-regions of the human brain. IIITH has a center for robotics and a center for computer vision with very good facilities to carry out doctoral research work as proposed in this project. University of Birmingham is also well equipped with a very good robotics laboratory. In general expermental and computational facilities in all partner institutes except IOE, Nepal are adequate to carry out doctoral works as proposed in this proposal.

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1.9 Duration and action plan

The duration of the action will be 36 months.
Action Plan # 1 PhD Thesis Work: A Brain-computer interface for natural communication Year 1 Semester 1 Semester 2 Activity Month -> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 A Brain-computer interface for natural communication New PhD student (NPS5) from UUM will undertake: Familiarisation with UUMs work on BCI design based on modelling of movement imagery (MI) related EEG time-series data using neural networks and self-organising fuzzy neural networks (SOFNNs) and classifier design using interval type-2 fuzzy logic. I. Kar, a senior Ph.D. student from IITK will visit UUM for six months to share the knowledge of QNN based feature extraction and classification for BCI work. LB will visit UUM for two months to supervise the QNN work and collaborate on enhancing SOFNN. P. Herman, a senior Ph.D. student from UUM will visit IITK for four months to work on QNN based feature extraction techniques for EEG-based BCI application. NPS5 will undertake: Design of an enhanced predictive virtual keyboard (VK) extending the current work. Familiarisation with Quantum Neural Network (QNN) approach to time-series data modelling. For the following years: Activity

12

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UUM

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Brain-computer interface for natural communication NPS5 will visit IITK and will: Develop an algorithm using QNN to model MI-related EEG time-series data and obtain appropriate feature patterns. Undertake comparative performance evaluation against other approaches. Design a scene reader that facilitates reading the details from a captured scene, so as to point to the desired target using BCI. GP will visit IITK for four months to supervise BCI work and collaborate on enhancing QNN and SOFNN. NPS5 will: Devise an enhanced type-2 fuzzy logic (T2FL) classifier and evaluate its performance against existing approaches. Conduct experiments with both able-bodied and disabled subjects to evaluate the capability of QNN/T2FL-based BCI configured to operate asynchronously the VK with scene reader and feedback for running the AGV and a manipulator. Final evaluation and thesis writing.

IITK

IITK UUM

UUM

Action Plan # 2 PhD Thesis Work: Visual tracking of a smart wheel-chair. Year 1 Activity Visual tracking of a smart wheel-chair. New PhD student (NPS1) from IITK will undertake: Review of visual tracking (VT) algorithms including target position prediction (TPP) and motion control algorithms for AGVs. S Kumar from IITK visits UUM for four months to develop an efficient VT algorithm using unscented Kalman Filter which will be implemented on Peoplebot at UUM. A Browne from UUM will visit IAT for four months to learn efficient visual navigation techniques for AGV. GP, UUM visits IAT for two months for joint supervision. NPS1 will undertake: Development of a TPP algorithm using QNN and comparative evaluation with existing algorithms. For the following years: Activity NPS1 will undertake Real-time experimentation of QNN based visual tracking algorithms on Patrolbot at IITK. NPS1 will visit UUM and will undertake Development of a combined AGV motor Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 1 Semester 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Implementing body IITK

UUM

IAT IAT IITK

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dynamics and camera model. Implementation of model based motion control algorithm on Peoplebot, UUM. NPS1 will visit IAT and will undertake: Development of a novel visual tracking algorithm using feedback structure in image processing. Real-time test and verification of the algorithm on Friend II at IAT LB, IITK will visit IAT for two months for joint supervision. Final evaluation and thesis writing.

IAT

IAT IITK

Action Plan # 3 Thesis work: Development of an integrated navigation system for a wheel chair like assistive robot Year 1 Activity Month -> 1 2 Semester 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Impleme nting body IIITH IAT

Development of an integrated navigation system for a wheel chair like assistive robot New PhD student (NPS3) from IIITK will work for his thesis in India. Senior PhD student AK Pandey from IIITH will visit IAT for four months.

For the following years: Activity NPS3 will visit IAT for one year. M Krishna visits IAT for two months for joint supervision Bipin Indurkhya visits IAT for two months for joint supervision. Completion of thesis work and thesis writing. Semester 3 4 5 6 Impleme nt-ing body IAT IAT IAT IIITH

Action Plan # 4 Thesis work: Intelligent control of a redundant manipulator using visual feedback Year 1 Activity Month -> 1 Semester 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Impleme nting body

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Intelligent control of a redundant manipulator using visual feedback Senior Ph.D. students S Kumar and AK Ray from IITK who are working on this project would have completed following actions before the start of this project: Survey of visual feedback (VF) and taskbased configuration control, and adaptive control schemes as applicable to a redundant manipulator. Development of a VF control scheme using fuzzy TS models and implementation on a 7DOF power-cube robot, IITK. Senior Ph.D. student AK Ray, IITK will visit UUM for 6 months to work on Visual motor coordination using SOFNN algorithm and type2 fuzzy system based learning algorithm. Senior Ph.D. student S Kumar, IITK will visit IAT for 6 months to work on Self-organized map (SOM) based visual motor coordination schemes KSOM, PSOM, and QSOM as extended to redundant manipulator system where redundancy is resolved through constrained optimization.

IITK

UUM

IAT

For the following years: Activity Intelligent control of a redundant manipulator using visual feedback A senior Ph. D. student from IAT will visit IITK for four months for experimental verification of visual motor coordination algorithms for a redundant manipulator system. Prof. Graeser, IAT will visit IITK for two months for joint supervision. Senior Ph.D. students Swagat Kumar and A K Ray will together work on: Real-time implementation of the visual-motor coordination schemes on a 7DOF powercube robot at IITK.

Semester 3

Implement ing body IITK

IITK IITK

Action Plan # 5 Thesis/dissertation Work: Neural Network Ensemble Learning for Robotic Control Year 1 Activity Month -> 1 2 Semester 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Impleme nting body IITK IITK

Neural Network Ensemble Learning for Robotic Control Senior Ph.D. student from UB will visit IITK for four months to work on this topic. Xin Yao, UB visits IITK for two months for joint supervision

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Senior PhD student A Patnaik from IITK will visit UB to work on this project. He has already developed necessary background on this topic LB, IITK will visit UB for two months for joint supervision.

UB

UB

For the following years: Activity Senior masters student Ramesh Chaudhary from IOE will carry out his MS dissertation on this topic at UB. Semester 3 4 Implementing body UB

Action Plan # 6 Thesis/dissertation work: Evolutionary Design of Fault-Tolerant Control Systems Year 1 Activity Month -> 1 2 Semester 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Impleme nting body IOE UB

Evolutionary Design of Fault-Tolerant Control Systems Senior Ph.D student from UB will visit IOE Nepal for four months. Senior PhD student Ashutosh Dwivedi from IITK will visit UB.

For the following years: Activity Senior Master student Suresh Gautam from IOE will carry out his thesis at UB on this topic. AK Mishra from IOE will visit UB for two months for joint supervision. Semester 3 4 Implementing body UB UB

Action Plan # 7 PhD Thesis Work: Developing an Open source Machine Vision Library for service and industrial robotic applications Year 1 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006

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Activity

Month ->

Semester 1 3 4 5

Semester 2 9 10 11

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Developing an Open source Machine Vision Library for service and industrial robotic applications New PhD student (NPS4) from IAT will start his Ph.D. work on this topic. Senior Ph.D. student SK Vuppala from IAT will visit IIITH for four months.

IAT IIITH

For the following years: Activity NPS4 will visit IITK for one year Completion of thesis work and thesis writing. Semester 3 4 5 6 Impleme nt-ing body IITK IAT

Action Plan # 8 Thesis/Dissertation Work: Robotic Perception exploiting cognitive neuroscience Year 1 Activity Month -> 1 2 Semester 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 Semester 2 9 10 11 12 Impleme nting body UUM UUM

Robotic Perception exploiting cognitive neuroscience Senior MSc student Ms Jyotika will carry out her dissertation work at UUM for 6 months M. Krishna visits UUM for two months for joint supervision.

For the following years: Activity Senior Ph.D. student P. Vance from UUM visits IIITH for collaborative work. Semester 3 4 Implementing body IIITH

Action Plan # 9 PhD Thesis Work: Development of an exo-skeletal robot for human hand support mechanical design, sensor fusion and control. Year 1 Semester 1 Semester 2

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Activity

Month ->

10

11

12

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Development of an exoskeletal robot for human hand support mechanical design, sensor fusion and control New PhD student (NPS2) from IITK will carry out his thesis work at IITK on mechanical design of exo-skeleton.

IITK

For the following years: Activity NPS2 will visit IAT. Ashish Dutta will visit IAT for two months for joint supervision. NPS2 will visit UUM. NPS2 will complete his thesis work and thesis writing. Semester 3 4 5 6 Implementing body IAT IAT UUM IITK

Action Plan #10: Synchronous e-learning system & tele-robotics Year 1 Activity Synchronous e-learning architecture finalisation Implementation of system and trials Implementation of system and trials Code optimisation and up-gradation based on feedback Camera and video capture setup API specification and API implementation for server to access and control the teleoperated robot. Server design and protocol specification between client and server Client design (GUI, protocol engine) Video server design and implementation Semester 1 Semester 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 0 1 2 Implementing body IITK IITK, IIIT IOE, UUM, IAT, UB IITK IITK, IIIT, IOE, UUM, IAT, UB IAT IITK, IAT IITK, IAT

For the following years: year 2, year 3 Activity

th

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3 Code optimisation and up-gradation based on feedback from users Client design (GUI, protocol engine) Video server design and implementation Video client design and implementation Deployment of system

6 IITK IAT, IITK IITK, IAT IITK, IAT IOE, IIIT, UUM, UB

Action Plan # 11 Other Major activities Activity Month -> 1 12 24 30 34 35 36 Implementing body IITK UUM IAT IIITH UUM,IAT IITK

International Workshop 1 at IITK International Workshop 2 at UUM Annual Meeting 1 at IAT Annual Meeting 2 at IIITH Road show in Germany and UK Road show in India and Nepal

EXPECTED RESULTS

2.1 Expected impact on target groups/beneficiaries (Max 2 pages)

2.1.1.the situation of target groups/beneficiaries IIT, Kanpur, India
IIT, Kanpur researchers and Ph.D. students will learn the-state-of-the art in brain-computer-interface (BCI) based natural communication system through collaboration with the research group at UUM. IAT, Bremen has done a great deal of research in assistive robotics. IITK research group will benefit in terms of basic and experimental research issues in visual navigation and visual feedback control. One new Ph.D. student recruited at IITK for the thesis work on visual tracking will spend 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM for linking research groups very strongly. Another new Ph.D. student will spend 6 months at IAT and 6 months at UUM for his/her thesis work on exo-skeleton robot. Two of the senior Ph.D. students at IITK are working on evolutionary algorithms for control applications in robotics. Since UB research group is very strong in evolutionary computation, each will spend 8 months in UB which will accelerate their thesis work in right direction. Senior lead researchers from UUM, IAT, and UB will visit IITK for joint supervision of PhD students as well as for augmenting post-graduate course modules at IITK by delivering tutorial lectures.

IIIT, Hyderabad, India

IIIT, Hyderabad will greatly benefit in mobile robotic research by collaborating with UUM and IAT. One new Ph.D. student from IIITH will visit IAT for 12 months for his thesis work on Development of integrated navigation system. Another Ph.D. student will spend 12 months in IAT for his thesis work on development of open-source machine vision library. Two senior research students will visit IAT and UUM to get collaborative research guidance for their research work. The lead researchers from IIITH will visit IAT and UUM for joint supervision of their Ph.D. students. In general this will be an ideal opportunity for this group to take a lead in assistive robotic research through this unique joint supervision scheme.

IAT, Bremen, Germany

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IAT lead researchers will have the opportunity to supervise one new Ph.D student at IAT, two new Ph.D. students from IITK in visual navigation and visual feedback control. IAT will also supervise Ph.D. thesis of a new Ph.D. students from IITH for one year. Senior Ph.D. students from IITK and UUM will visit to share their work-experience with their counterparts in IAT. It will be a wonderful opportunity for IAT to demonstrate their expertise in assistive robotic research through joint supervision and by providing excellent experimental facility to Asian students.

University of Ulster, Magee Campus, UK

One new Ph,D student will be recruited for UUM and will work on brain-computer interface based natural communication. The Ph.D. student will visit IITK for learning quantum neural networks which will be useful for modelling EEG data. UUM group will supervise one senior M.Sc. student for one year on robot perception. This group will also be responsible for supervising two New Ph.D students from India. Two senior Ph.D. students will visit IITK for collaborative thesis work with their Indian counter-parts in the field of Visual navigation and visual feedback control. Another senior Ph.D. student from UUM will visit IAT for collaborative thesis work in visual navigation. One of the lead researchers from UUM will visit IITK and IAT for joint supervision of the thesis works.

University of Brimingham, UK
UB lead researchers will jointly supervise two senior Ph.D. students from IITK and two senior masters students from Nepal in Ensemble Neural networks and evolvable hardware which will be mutually beneficial. Two senior Ph.D. students from UB will visit IITK and IIITH for collaborative thesis work. The novel algorithms developed in UB will be verified through experimentation at IITK.

IOE, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

IOE, Nepal will benefit in terms of logistic support from other partners in robotic research. Equipments worth Euro 60,000.00 will be procured for infrastructure development. Two senior masters students will visit UB for thesis work in Ensemble neural network and evolvable hardware. IOE faculty member will be trained in robotics technology and a special course module in robotics and automation will be developed. In general all the partners will have a win-win situation by gaining from each other. By associating FWBI, Bremen and Invacare UK limited, this partnership is ensuring its long-term collaboration through industrial sponsorships in this very exciting field which will be mutually beneficial for both EU and Asia.

2.1.2 The technical and management capacities of target groups and/or any partners where applicable.
IIT, Kanpur is the number one technology institute in India taking a pioneering leadership role both in teaching and research. At any time the faculty members and research engineers/scientists are engaged in carrying out about 400 sponsored projects and almost an equal number of consultancy projects. During the years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, the research grants received under the sponsored projects category have been about 336 and 415 million rupees, respectively, whereas under the consultancy projects category, these have been approximately 33 and 54 million rupees, respectively. IIIT, Hyderabad, India is the best among all information technology institutes in India and has been known for its innovations in many fields including natural language processing, robotics and computer vision. IIITH is one of the consortium university members for an international project involving 12 universities for optical character recognition for digital libraries. IAT gets funding from several research projects that are currently being carried out. The undertaken research projects are supported by various funding institutes and industries ranging from the local government based research funding institutions and the European Commission. Presently the EU-FP6 research programs BRAINROBOT is coordinated by IAT. On a national level the research programs AMAROB and MLK are coordinated by IAT. The University of Ulster (UU) has continuously attracted and managed large research and consultancy grants from European Unioon, national research councils and local and national industries. For instance, UU managed 21.022 million research grants and contracts in 2004/05, and delivered the outcomes with the highest standard. The University of Birmingham manages 73.6 million research grants and contracts in 2004/05, and is very experienced in managing large grants and deliver the outcomes with the highest standard. IOE Nepal successfully executed an engineering education project of 20 million US Dollar in between 1989-1999 from CIDA (Canada), SDC (Swiss), and IDA (World Bank). 36 Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page

2.2 Concrete outputs (Max 1 page)

In addition to disabilities due to neuro-muscular disorders, European countries including UK are facing problems due to ageing of society and high cost of care. The success of the proposed project would go a long way in improving the lives of persons with disability due to old age, disease or injury.

Human resources development:

15 lead researchers, 14 senior Ph.D. students, 3 senior Masters students and 5 new Ph.D students will participate in project execution. Through exchange visits, all 37 researchers will greatly benefit from high quality expertise available in all partner-institutions. Simultaneously 20 international experts will be involved through two work-shops for giving direction and critical assesment of the project outcomes. The project will particularly help develop a highly skilled man-power of 19 doctorate researchers out of which five students will receive PhD qualification as a direct outcome of this project. Closer interacton among 37 researchers will lead to more future co-operations which will have its own multiplying effect in terms of EU-Asia scientific cooperation.

Exchange of Knowledge:
The UUM group are very strong in computational intelligence and BCI work. The IITK group are very strong in intelligent control and robotics, and soft computing. Both the groups have developed new computational intelligence techniques that will impact the proposed investigations. For example, QNN developed in IITK group will be highly useful in EEG data modelling for enhanced feature extraction. Similarly SOFNN developed in UUM group can be used to develop hybrid control architecture for redundant manipulator systems. IITK group is very strong in different self-organizing map (SOM) algorithms for visual control. IAT has introduced a new concept of feedbcak structure in image-processing. Combination these two techniques in appropriate manner will lead to an efficient visual control system for effective manipulation using a redundant robot. IITK group has developed a very Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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efficient learning algorithm for feedforward network using adaptive learning rate. This novel concept can be extended to the training of ensemble neural network for performing complex task. Since UB is very strong in evolutionary computation, the joint supervision of Ph.D students by UB-IITK team will bring out the best in a Ph.D. student. IIITH will complement its knowledge on integrated naviagtion system with IAT and UUM. Thus all partner institutes will benefit from each other so also all 22 students who will get benefit of joint-supervision scheme. Finally all five partners are committed to extend their support to IOE Nepal in robotic education and research.

Scientific Contributions:
Successful project completion will lead to following outcomes: Enhanced algorithms for target predictions and optimal tracking by an AGV; A self-organising control algorithm for designing a robust, stable and smart redundant manipulator system with visual-feedback. A practical BCI based communication system tested in real-time for controlling AGV and manipulator combination in UUM, IITK, IITH and IAT. Evolutionary algorithms developed at UB for assistive robotic applications will be tested in real time at IITK and IIITH. An exoskelatan robotic device with advanced human-machine interface for muscular function augmentation. All partners will develop necessary expertise to build a low cost brain-operated smart wheel-chair and robotic arm system. A road show will be conducted in four countries UK, Germany, India and Nepal to bring visibility to this collaborative effort These exciting high quality research outputs will be disseminated through publications in international journals and conference proceedings that may have a global impact.

Long-term goal:
We are confident that proposed investigations will educate us sufficiently to take this collaboration to the next stage of building a prototype of assistive robotic system that would combine a BCI based control and command system, a smart wheel chair with a redundant manipulator system to give the disabled community the required freedom of mobility and voluntary actions.

2.3 Multiplier effects (Max 1 page)

It is planned to hold two workshops: one for deep deliberation on the work plans at the project on-set and the other near the end to evaluate and validate the project outcomes. These work-shops will be open to other interested researchers for paper presentation and interactive discussions. Internationally renowned researchers will be invited for keynote presentations and providing guidance. Following external conferences will also be targeted for dissemination of research results and networking with wider research community: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2008 International BCI workshop 2008, Graz IEEE International conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) 2008 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2009 IEEE International conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) 2009 International BCI Meeting 2009, New York At least one researcher from the partner-institutes will attend all the above conferences. Since 19 Ph.D. students and 3 M.Sc. students will be benefitted by this project, most of them are more likely to work for mutually beneficial venture that would support EU-Asia link further. For example some of them may take academic positions in EU Univeristies or they will work in some EU SMEs. The involvement of FWBI, Bremen and Invacare UK limited will surely help this aspect of Asian brains getting involved in EU economic structure rather than the general trend of Asian brains getting attracted to US economic structure.

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2.4 Sustainability (Max 3 Pages) 2.4.1 Financial sustainability

To take care of financial sustainability, FWBI, Bremen and Invacare UK limited have been associated with this project. The FWBI will facilitate transfer of technology from EU-Asia partners to SMEs. In this way we will be able to promote our collaboration through industry-academia linkage. The local wheelchair manufacturer InvaCare UK limited has already donated a power wheelchair to UUM for research purposes. The succesful outcome of this collborative effort will encourage this local manufacturer to come forward for further funding of the present consortium activities. The ISEL group at UUM has been successful in attracting proof-of-concept funding from INI in a previous project. Funding applications will also be made to other funding agencies for product development and further research. Such agencies are Invest Northern Ireland (INI), European Union, and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK. IITK research group is continuing research in the area of assistive robotics through funding from Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). IITK research group will be greatly benefitted if this current proposal gets funded since collaborative research is very much essential in the area of assistive robotics. The expertise gained from this project will help the group to approach Department of Information Technology for further funding so that the group can build an indigeneous smart wheel chair for a class of disabled population tailormade for Indian situation. UB has more than 70 million external funding each year. It has rich experience of managing large EU projects, more than 10 million each year. The local governments, e.g., Birmingham City Council in UK, are all very keen on establishing close ties with Asian countries in higher education. The proposed project fits the strategy of local Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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governments very well and is likely to obtain additional support from local governments for certain activities, e.g., dissemination of project outcomes. Also successful completion of this project will inspire present consortium to expand their collborative efforts. There is a very strong desire in EU and UK universities/institutes to establish collaborative links with Indian universities/institutes in particular and other Asian countries in general. For example, a UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) was recently launched by UK and India governments to support collaborative projects between UK and India institutions. We therefore strongly believe that the collaborative activities will continue more vigorously with institutional support at the end of action One of the most important outcomes would be official endorsement of Joint Ph.D. system between EU and India. If this proposal is funded, then partners will approach respective head of institutes for legislation in this regard.

2.4.2 Institutional Level (Intellectual Property Right (IPR))

All the participating institutions IITK, IIITH, IAT, UUM, UB and IOE will share any IPR arising out of the project. Exact percetange of the IPR credit to each of the individual researchers will be decided through a formal meeting of all the researchers in which a unanimous decision will need to be arrived at.

2.5 Logical framework

Please fill in Annex C1

3.

BUDGET FOR THE ACTION

Fill in Annex B (worksheet 1) to the Guidelines for applicants for the total duration of the action and for its first 12 months. For further information see the Guidelines for grant applicants (Section 2.1.4).

4.

EXPECTED SOURCES OF FUNDING

Fill in Annex B (worksheet 2) to the Guidelines for applicants to provide information on the expected sources of funding for the action. Please note that there are two different sheets to be completed.

In kind contributions Please mention here below the contributions in kind provided by the applicant, his partners or another source (please specify), if any (maximum 1 page).
Under in kind contribution: Indirect investment from UUM Provision of specialist equipment 5% for BCI lab (90000 Euro) 0.15 90000 13500 5% of Peoplebot robot (37000 Euro) 0.15 37000 5550 Total 19050 Euro

Explanations can be found at the following address: http://ec.europa.eu/comm/europeaid/qsm/documents/pcm_manual_2004_en.pdf

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Indirect investment from IITK Provision of specialist equipment 5% for 7DOF Powercube robot (40,000 Euro) 0.15 40000 6000 5% of Patrolbot (30000 Euro) 0.15 30000 4500 5% of IRB 6 DOF robot (21000 Euro) 0.15 21000 3150 5% of Visual Servoing equipment (40,000 Euro) 0.15 40000 6000 Total 19650 Euro

Indirect investment from UB Provision of specialist equipment Access to special computer cluster from 22 nodes to 200 nodes: 60000 Euro Total 60,000 Euro

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II.
1. IDENTITY

THE APPLICANT

Full legal name: Acronym:

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur IITK

Legal Entity Sheet number2 Nationality: INDIAN Public Organization (Fully funded by Ministry of Human Resources and Development, India) Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208 016, UP, India +91-512-2597198 +91-512-2590063 director@iitk.ac.in www.iitk.ac.in Dr. Laxmidhar Behera lbehera@iitk.ac.in

Legal status Official address: Postal address:

Telephone number: Country code + city code + number Fax number: Country code + city code + number E-mail of the Organisation: Website of the Organisation: Contact person for this action : Contact persons email address :

Any change in the addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and in particular e-mail, must be notified in writing to the European Commission. The European Commission will not be held responsible in case it cannot contact an applicant.

2.

BANK DETAILS

Before the grant contract is signed, the applicants selected will have to supply a financial identification form using the model in Annex E to the Guidelines for applicants, certified by the bank where the payments are to be made.

If the applicant has already signed a contract with the European Commission

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3.

DESCRIPTION OF APPLICANT

3.1 When was your organisation founded and when did it start its activities?
The organization was founded in 1959 and the activities started in 1960.

3.2 What are the main activities of your organisation at present?

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) is carrying out original research of significance and technology development at the cutting edge. It imparts training to students to make them competent, motivated engineers and scientists. The Institute not only celebrates freedom of thought, cultivates vision and encourages growth, but also inculcates human values and concern for the environment and the society. IITK has been consistently rated as number one tech. school in India and the institute has been playing an important role in scientific and technological innovation that has a global impact. The vision of IIT Kanpur is also to be recognized globally for excellence in research & development. The institute strives for achieving a lead position in the basic as well as applied research, both at the national and international levels. The challenge in technology oriented research is to discover new knowledge and apply it to the invention and development of new processes and products. At present, the research is being conducted at several levels, starting from micro-level, dealing with molecules and living cells, to the macro-level involving processes and products. Meeting this challenge requires combining the efforts of researchers in several science and engineering fields in collaboration with other academic institution, R&D organizations and industries. In the recent few years, several cross disciplinary research areas emerged at the institute such as: computational fluid dynamics, environmental engineering, bio-engineering, cognitive science, quantum computing, nano-science and technology, display technology, spintronics, rail safety and cyber security. The institute has added several centralized facilities to promote such interdisciplinary research. The research profile of the institute is continuously growing every year. At any time the faculty and research engineers/scientists are engaged in carrying out about 400 sponsored projects and almost an equal number of consultancy projects. During the years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, the research grants received under the sponsored projects category have been about 336 and 415 million rupees, respectively, whereas under the consultancy projects category, these have been approximately 33 and 54 million rupees, respectively. The institute faculty members have filed more than 20 patents in India and abroad. Five patents have been awarded in the past two years. The institute has signed several memorandum of understandings with Indian as well as international academic/research institutions and industries to strengthen its collaborative research efforts. Institute started bringing out Directions as Research & Development magazine every quarter since October 2003.

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3.3 List of the management board / committee of your organisation

Name Profession Natio nality Indian Position Years on the board

Dr. M. Anandakrishnan

Chairperson, Madras Institute of Development Studies 79, Second Main Road, Gandhinagar, Adyar, Chennai - 600 020 Tamil Nadu, India

Chairman, One year Board of Governors (BOG)

Dr. Sanjay G. Dhande Dr. G.K. Mehta

Director, IIT, Kanpur

Indian Indian

Member, BOG Member, BOG

5 Years 3 years

Eminent Scientist Department of Atomic Energy Nuclear Science Center New Delhi Director Institute of Technology Banaras Hindu University Varanasi Vice-Chairman & Managing Director Reliance Industries Limited Mumbai Joint Secretary (Technical) Government of India Department of Secondary Education & Higher Education Ministry of Human Resource Development New Delhi Vice-Chancellor Rajiv Gandhi Technical University Bhopal Vice-Chancellor Chhratapati Shahuji Maharaj University Kanpur Joint Secretary, Information Technology & Chief Executive Officer, CHIPS Government of Chattisgarh Department of Commerce &

Dr. S. Lele

Indian

Member, BOG

3 years

Mr. Anil. D. Ambani

Indian

Member, BOG

3 years

Mr. Ravi Mathur

Indian

Member, BOG

3 Years

Professor M. C. Gupta

Indian

Member, BOG

3 Years

Professor S. S. Katiyar

Indian

Member, BOG

3 years

Aman Kumar Singh

Indian

Member, BOG

3 years

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Name

Profession

Natio nality

Position

Years on the board

Industry (Information Technology), Raipur Professor I D Dhariyal Department of Mathematics & Statistics Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur Professor Jitendra Kumar Department of Material Science Programme Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur , Kanpur
Indian Member, BOG 2 years

Professor Jitendra Kumar

Indian

Member, BOG

2 years

4.

CAPACITY TO MANAGE AND IMPLEMENT ACTIONS

4.1. Experience of similar actions

During the years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, the research grants received at IITK under the sponsored projects category have been about 336 and 415 million rupees, respectively, whereas under the consultancy projects category, these have been approximately 33 and 54 million rupees, respectively. At any time the faculty and research engineers/scientists are engaged in carrying out about 400 sponsored projects and almost an equal number of consultancy projects.

Some of the international projects that are being carried out at IITK are as follows:

International Project 1 (2005-2009)

1) Development of Monolith Reactors for Multiphase reactions 2) Hydrodynamics of Slurry Bubble Column Reactors. 4.1.1 IITK has signed a joint MOU with Chevron, USA/ Advanced Refining Technology, USA/HPCL, Mumbai for working on problems of mutual interests. the results of the action: The projects are still on-going. In the first project, IITK research group has studied the effect of process parameters on wash-coat thickness and catalyst loading. The high pressure reactor set-up has been constructed. In the second project, the effect of flow parameters on the hold-up and pressure drop is being investigated. your organisation's role (lead manager or partner) and its degree of involvement in the action: Prof. Deepak Kunzru of IIT Kanpur is coordinating the project as the principal investigator. the cost of the action: USD 500,000.00 donors to the action (name, amount contributed): Chevron USA, USD 500,000.00

4.1.2

4.1.3 4.1.4 4.1.5

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International Project 2 (2004-2007)

ARPET II ( Asian Regional Programme on Environmental Technology Phase II) http://www.arrpet.ait.ac.th/

4.1.6 4.1.7

the object and location of the action: IITK, IIT, Mumbai, India, Lund Institute, Sweden, Vanlang University Vietnam, King Mongkut University of Technology, Thailand, AIT Thaliand. the results of the action: The project is about the treatment of domestic waste water in India. The project work is still going on. ARRPET I was initiated to conduct a study to assess the growing concern on environmental degradation in Asia by a working group, each tackling a specific problem in a structured manner. Funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and co-ordinated by Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), ARRPET involves National Research Institutions (NRIs) from 8 Asian countries namely, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. ARRPET II aims at application of results from ARRPET I at pilot scale . The activities in ARRPET Phase II will be carried out from January 1, 2004 December 31, 2007. your organisation's role (lead manager or partner) and its degree of involvement in the action: Prof. Saumen Guha is coordinating this project as the principal investigator. Details can be found at http://www.arrpet.ait.ac.th/wwtm/team.html the cost of the action: Rupees 7.5 million.

4.1.8 4.1.9

4.1.10 donors to the action (name, amount contributed) : SIDA, Rupees 7.5 Million
International Project 3 (2005-2008)

4.1.11 the object and location of the action: Joint venture between IITK and Neurogen, USA. 4.1.12 the results of the action: Synthesis of nearly 120 compounds. 4.1.13 your organisation's role (lead manager or partner) and its degree of involvement in the action: Prof.
Vinod K. Singh is acting as principal investigator.

4.1.14 the cost of the action: Neurogen, USA contributed USD 126,000.00 during 2003-2005. The present
cost is Rupees 5.5 million.

4.1.15 donors to the action (name, amount contributed) Neurogen, USA.

International Project 4 (2006-2009)
EU-Project BRAHMWTWINN http://www.brahmatwinn.uni-jena.de/ 4.1.16 the object and location of the action: This EU project has 17 partners and IITK is one of the Asian Partners.

4.1.17 the results of the action: The project is about Twinning European and South Asian river basins to
enhance capacity and implement adaptive integrated water resources management approaches. The work is in progress. BRAHMATWINN will enhance capacity to carry out a harmonised integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach as addressed by the European Water Initiative in headwater river systems of alpine mountain massifs already impacted from climate change, and to establish transfer of professional IWRM expertise, approaches and tools based on case studies carried out in twinning European and Asian river basins. The project addresses all important IWRM issues in a balanced way, including conflict resolution in the trans- boundary Danube and Brahmaputra River Basins in Europe and South Asia respectively.

4.1.18 your organisation's role: Prof. RP Singh, IITK is coordinating the grant of Euro 131,108.00 4.1.19 the cost of the action: Euro 131,108.00 (For India) 4.1.20 donors to the action (name, amount contributed): EU

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International Project 5 (2004-2008)

A project funded by Welcome Trust, UK in Bio-medical science 4.1.21 the results of the action: The project is about Structural studies on GTPases and EDG family GProtein coupled receptors. The work is in progress. 4.1.22 your organisation's role: Dr. Balaji Prakash is executing the project as the principal investigator. 4.1.23 the cost of the action: Rupees 26.81 million. 4.1.24 donors to the action: Welcome Trust, UK

International Project 6 (2004-2008)

A project funded by Welcome Trust, UK in Bio-medical science

4.1.25 the object and location of the action: Title: Development of ultra-fast pulse shaping based high
resolution infra-red imaging instrument for cancer diagnostics and their possible elimination. Location: The project is being carried out in IITK

4.1.26 the results of the action: The work is in progress. Here is the summary:
Optical imaging by benign subpicosecond broadband IR laser pulses can be used for Multi-Photon Imaging (MPI). MPI provides several advantages over MRI techniques, like its higher resolution, freedom from MR magnet bore or application on patients with pacemakers. However, its biomedical application demands discrimination of signals from scattered light on one hand and limiting pulse distortions caused by the passage of IR laser through sample on the other. The latter improvisation is necessary to achieve delivery of high photon flux needed for in vivo MPI. Accurate measurement of absorbance changes is also important for a meaningful application of MPI. Propagation distortions make it impossible to deliver high enough IR sub-pico-second pulses for multiphoton imaging applications. The aim of this proposal has been to use a computer controlled Ultra-fast tunable acousto-Optic modulated pulse-Shaper (UTOPS) to enhance throughput for ultra-fast laser pulses through dense tissue and optical fiber. This would substantially further the current capabilities. The pre-compensation approaches developed for the functional imaging purposes would also enable us to deliver high enough intensity through optical fibers at the tissue to induce multi-photon fluorescence and enable us to demonstrate in vivo fiber based multi-photon fluorescence imaging for the first time. Technologically, not all pulses from a commercial ultra-fast laser (>106Hz) can be shaped and it often requires the next level of sophistication to filter the appropriately shaped pulses. The high photon-flux of multi-MHz before filtering can provide optical tweezing and manipulation to destroy malignancies. The shaped pulses could monitor the internal degrees of freedom of neurotransmitters or trial drug molecules. Such an effort would be of immense interest to biologists, who could then isolate and trigger events of interest under in-vivo conditions and make realistic structure-function measurements. The ability to enhance the coherence timescales of the optical excitation process with ultra-fast shaped pulses would also be useful in investigating bio-computing related issues and the use of bio-systems as prototypes for alternative forms of computation. Historically, spectroscopists have played a key role in developing biological imaging instruments and many such achievements have been recognized with Nobel Prize starting with Bloch in 1946. Development of FT-NMR & its extension to FT-2D-NMR forms the basis of today's MRI techniques. Optical analog of such schemes are being realized only recently with the turn of the century. Similarly, developments in multi-photon excitations happened right from the development of lasers in the 60's to the first practical MPI demonstration by Webb in 1990. This proposal tries to extend upon these ideas. It focuses on a new spectroscopic technique for Bio-medical application. The aims are to either detect more efficiently the transmitted photons through the dense tissue for functional imaging or in the other case for measuring multi-photon induced fluorescence. The overall proposed approach of pulse shaping technique would measure the optical free induction decay (OFID) and benefit from the successful schemes of coherent discrimination, both spatial and temporal, as in the MRI approach. The capability to deliver high photon-flux would also enable ablation of cells and tissues with high accuracy and can restrict/eliminate malignancy. Thus, this proposal has been entitled: "Development of Ultra-fast Pulse Shaping based High Resolution Infrared Imaging Instrument for Cancer Diagnostics and their Possible Elimination". The biological sample forms an integral part of this system development through a computer controlled closed feedback loop. As a first biological application, this will be used in the detection of transformed tissue type. The issues that are addressed are that of evolution of a Multi-Photon-Imager into a "High resolution IR Imager". The technique that would be used for this effort is that of UTOPS, which provides control over one or more parameters, such as, amplitude, phase, frequency, and inter-pulse separation. The biological sample is an integral part of this system development through a computer controlled closed feedback loop. 4.1.27 your organisation's role: Prof. D. Goswami is executing this project as principal investigator. Asia-Link Programme: Application Form, 5th Call for Proposals, 2006 Page
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4.1.28 the cost of the action: Rupees 27.725 million. 4.1.29 donors to the action: Welcome Trust, UK

4.2. Resources Annual income over the last three years, mentioning where applicable for each year, the names of the main financial backers and the proportion of annual income each has contributed
IITK is a public organization which is completely funded by Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), India. Annual income of the institute in last three years is given as follows: Year 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 Non-plan Budget Rupees 680 million Rupees 680 million Rupees 680 million Plan Budget Rupees 206 million Rupees 300 million Rupees 345 million Internal Resources Rupees 171 million Rupees 161 million Rupees 186 million Grand Total Rupees 1057 million Rupees 1141 million Rupees 1211 million

4.2..1

In addition the institute received an annual funding of Rupees 500 million for various sponsored projects and consultancies in the year 2004-05. This figure always increases every year.

.2..2

Financial data. Please provide the following information on the basis of the profit and loss account and balance sheet of your organisation Year Turnover or equivalent Net earnings or equivalent Total balance sheet or budget Shareholders equity or equivalent Medium and longterm debt Short-term debt (< 1 year)

N N-1 N-2
Since the annual balance sheet of the institute consists of more than 100 pages, this book will be provided when this proposal gets selected.

Any guarantees granted by third parties:

IITK is a no-risk organization since the institute is fully funded by the Govt. of India and thus any guarantee by a third party is not necessary.

Any other factors demonstrating financial viability and any risks or uncertainties about implementation:
Since the institute is fully funded by the Govt. of India, there is absolutely no risk involved about implementation.

.2..3

The number of full-time and part-time staff by category (e.g. number of project managers, accountants, etc), indicating their place of employment
The institute employs 800 permanent staffs and 375 faculty members.

.2..4

Equipment and offices

IITK is the number 1 tech-school in India and is thus equipped with the best laboratory, computational and library facilities. As far as this proposal is concerned, IITK has the state-of-art laboratory in robotics and control research.

.2..5

Other relevant resources (e.g. volunteers, associated organisations, networks that might also contribute to implementation).
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IITK is self-sufficient to implement a project of this size.

5.

OTHER APPLICATIONS MADE TO EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS, THE EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND (EDF) AND EU MEMBER STATES
EU Member States. The applicant may list only actions in the same field as this proposal.

5.1 Grants, contracts and loans obtained over the last three years from European Institutions, the EDF and

Country of intervention

EC budget line, EDF or EU Member Amount (EUR) States

Year obtained

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III.
1.

PARTNERS OF THE APPLICANT PARTICIPATING IN THE ACTION

DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

Partner 1 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Indian Higher Education Institute (Public Organization fully funded by Ministry of Human Resource Development, India) IIT, Kanpur, 208 016, UP India Dr. Laxmidhar Behera +91-5127198 +91-5120063 lbehera@iitk.ac.in 1175 Rupees 1711 million income in 2005-06 IIT Kanpur manages Rupees 500 million research grants and contracts in managing large grants and delivers the outcomes with the highest standard.

IITK is the applicant.

IITK coordinated the proposed action plan from the scratch. IITK took the initiative to form the group and prepared this proposal with full-cooperation of other five partners. IITK will be the overall coordinator of the proposal. Simultaneously IITK will co-supervise PhD students, coordinate the first international workshop, coordinate the actions that provide logistic support to IOE Nepal and will coordinate the action plan for the visibility of the present EU-Asia project outcome through roadshows.

Important:

This application form must be accompanied by a signed and dated partnership statement from every partner, in accordance with the model provided on the next page.

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2.

PARTNERSHIP STATEMENT

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1.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

Partner 2 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address
International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad

Indian Deemed University International Institute of Information Technology Gachibowli, Hyderabad, (A.P.), INDIA-500 032

Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action

K. Madhaba Krishna 91-40-23001967 (Extn: 269) 91-40-23001413 mkrishna@iiit.ac.in 76 22.7 million Indian Rupees in 2005/06 One of the consortium university members for a project involving 12 universities for optical character recognition for digital libraries

Several years of cooperation with the applicant

Full participation in all discussion and proposal writing.

Partner

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DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

Partner 3 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action
EU-TOK-BrainRobot DAAD ISAP Exchange program with south korea University of Bremen

Germany GOV University of Bremen, Institut fr Automatisierungstechnik, NW1 / FB1, Otto-Hahn-Alle 1, 28359 Bremen Prof. Dr. Axel Grser +49 (0) 421 218 7326 / secretary: 7523 +49 (0) 421 218 4596 / 4707 ag@iat.uni-bremen.de 28

Several years of cooperation

Full participation in all discussion and proposal writing

Partner

Important:

This application form must be accompanied by a signed and dated partnership statement from every partner, in accordance with the model provided on the next page.

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DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

This section must be completed for each partner organisation within the meaning of section 2.1.2 of the Guidelines for Applicants. Any associates as defined in the same section need not be mentioned. You must make as many copies of this table as necessary to create entries for more partners. Partner 4 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant
University of Ulster

British Higher Education Institute (Public Organisation) University of Ulster, Magee campus, Northland Road, Londonderry, BT48 7JL, UK Dr. G. Prasad +44 28 71375645 +44 28 71375470 g.prasad@ulster.ac.uk 4178 (across all campuses of the University of Ulster) 156 million income in 2004/05 The University of Ulster managed 21, 022, 000 research grants and contracts in 2004/05, and is very experienced in managing large grants and deliver the outcomes with the highest standard.

The applicant Dr. L Behera from IITK was a visiting research scholar at UUM in July 2006. Dr. G. Prasad visited IITK in 2005 to present an invited seminar and discuss research collaborations.

Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action

Dr. Behera and Dr. Prasad jointly conceived the idea of this proposal while former was visiting UUM for collaborative research. Since then both have been collaboratively working on planning, organising partner meetings, and drafting of the proposal. We will co-supervise PhD and MSc students and participate in exchange visits, curriculum design, workshops, seminars, conferences and short courses.

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DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

Partner 5 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action
The University of Birmingham

British Higher Education Institute (Public Organisation) Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK Professor Xin Yao +44 121 414 3747 +44 121 414 2799 x.yao@cs.bham.ac.uk 5500 334 million income in 2004/05 The University of Birmingham manages 73.6 million research grants and contracts in 2004/05, and is very experienced in managing large grants and deliver the outcomes with the highest standard. The University of Birmingham led an Asia-ITC project funded by EC in 2001-02. One partner is IITK, which is also a partner in this project. Full participation in all discussions and proposal writing.

We will co-supervised PhD students from Asia and participate in conferences, workshops, seminars and short courses.

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DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTNERS

This section must be completed for each partner organisation within the meaning of section 2.1.2 of the Guidelines for Applicants. Any associates as defined in the same section need not be mentioned. You must make as many copies of this table as necessary to create entries for more partners. Partner 6 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant
Engineering education project of 20 million US Dollar in between 1989-1999 from CIDA (Canada), SDC (Swiss), IDA (World Bank) Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

NEPALEASE GOV Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal Dr. Arbind Kumar Mishra +977-1-5543081 +977-1-5530770 akmishra@ioe.edu.np

IOE has received strong cooperation from IIT Kanpur from years. Both the institutes have signed an MOU which is working successfully from last more than 10 years.

Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action

Full participation in all discussion and proposal writing.

Partner

Important:

This application form must be accompanied by a signed and dated partnership statement from every partner, in accordance with the model provided on the next page.

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IV.

ASSOCIATES OF THE APPLICANT PARTICIPATING IN THE ACTION

1. DESCRIPTION OF THE ASSOCIATES

This section must be completed for each associated organisation within the meaning of section 2.1.2 of the Guidelines for Applicants. You must make as many copies of this table as necessary to create entries for more associates. Associate 1 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address FWBI - Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Institut Forschungsgesellschaft m. b. H Germany eGmbH Wilseder Berg Str. 5 28329 Bremen Germany Prof. Dr. A. Schne +49 421 218 9468 +49 421 218 2934 schoene@fwbi.org 5

Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action

EU project IntARWeld Some selected national projects LeRos-F, ISmaS Several years of cooperation Technology transfer

Associate

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2. DESCRIPTION OF THE ASSOCIATES

This section must be completed for each associated organisation within the meaning of section 2.1.2 of the Guidelines for Applicants. You must make as many copies of this table as necessary to create entries for more associates. Associate 1 Full legal name (business name) Nationality Legal status Official address Contact person Telephone number Fax number E-mail address Number of employees Other relevant resources Experience of similar actions, in relation to role in the implementation of the proposed action History of cooperation with the applicant Role and involvement in preparing the proposed action Role and involvement in implementing the proposed action Invacare are a market leading manufacturer of wheelchairs and assistive technology aids. Debbie.williams@invacare.com 180 Invacare UK Limited British Limited Company South Road, Bridgend Industrial Estate, Bridgend CF31 3PY, UK Debbie Williams +441656 753200

We have provided a power wheelchair for research. None

Fully support the consortium for technology transfer.

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V.
ADMINISTRATIVE DATA Name of the Applicant Nationality Legal Entity Sheet number3 Legal status4 Date of establishment of the organization Partner 1

CHECKLIST

ASIA-LINK PROGRAMME, 5TH CALL FOR PROPOSALS - BUDGET LINE 19.1002

To be filled in by the applicant Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur Indian

Public Organization (Fully funded by Ministry of Human Resource Development, India)

Name: Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur Nationality: Indian Legal status: Government Organization (Fully funded by Ministry of Human Resource Development, India)

Partner 2

Name: International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad Nationality: Indian Legal status: Deemed University

Partner 3

Name: University of Bremen Nationality: Germany Legal status: GOV

Partner 4

Name: University of Ulster, Magee Campus, UK Nationality: British Legal status: Public Organization

3 4

If the applicant has already signed a contract with the European Commission E.g. non profit making, governmental body, international organisation

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BEFORE SENDING YOUR PROPOSAL, PLEASE CHECK THAT EACH OF THE FOLLOWING Partner 5 Name: THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA : COMPONENTS IS COMPLETE AND RESPECTSThe University of Birmingham Nationality: British Legal status: Higher Education Institute (Public Organisation) 1. The 6 Partnercorrect grant application form, published for this call for proposals,Tribhuvan used Name: Institute of Engineering, has been University, Kathmandu, Nepal 2. The proposal is typed and is in English 3. One original and one copy are included 4. Two floppy disks or Cd-Roms are enclosed 5. Each partner has completed and signed a partnership statement and the statements are included (if any). 6. The budget is presented in the format requested, is expressed in EURO and is enclosed 7. The logical framework has been completed and is enclosed 8. The duration of the action is equal to or lower than 36 months (the maximum allowed) 9. The duration of the action is equal to or higher than 12 months (the minimum allowed) 10. The requested contribution is equal to or higher than EUR 200 000 (the minimum allowed) 11. The requested contribution is equal to or lower than EUR 750 000 (the maximum allowed) 12. The requested contribution is equal to or lower than 75 % of the total eligible costs, or 90% of the total eligible costs if all Asian partners are from least developed countries), or 100% if all Asian partners are from Maldives, Indonesia (Aceh and North Sumatra), Sri Lanka (all coastal districts except Mannar), Thailand (Ranong, Phangnga, Phuket, Krabi, Trang, Satun) and India (coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states; Andaman and Nicobar islands) 13. The Declaration by the applicant has been filled in and has been signed Title of the Proposal Nationality: Nepalease Legal status: GOV

To be filled in by the applicant Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

To be filled in by the European Commission Yes No

Yes

A Collaborative Academic Program for Innovation in Intelligent Assistive Robotics

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VII. ASSESSMENT GRID

(FOR THE USE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION ONLY)
YES 1. The Deadline has been respected 2. The Application form satisfies all the criteria mentioned in the Checklist (Section V of the Grant application form). The verification of the Checklist has been conducted by On the .. DECISION 1: The Committee has decided to recommend the Concept Note for Evaluation after having passed the Administrative check. (If not, reasons must be encoded in the Administrative check Grid in CRIS and in the Administrative Check report in CRIS). DECISION 2: The Committee has approved the Concept Note and decided to proceed with the evaluation of the full proposal after having pre-selected the best Concept Notes. (If not, reasons must be encoded in the Concept Note Evaluation Grid in CRIS this includes the evaluation sheet for assessors and delegations, in the Concept Note Evaluation report and in the letters sent out to applicants.) YES DECISION 3: A. The Committee has recommended the proposal for Eligibility verification after having been provisionally selected within the top ranked scored proposals and within the available financial envelope. (If not, reasons must be encoded in the Evaluation Grid in CRIS this includes the evaluation sheet for experts and delegations, in the Evaluation report and in the letters sent out to applicants.) B. The Committee has recommended the proposal for Eligibility verification after having been put in the reserve list should any provisionally selected proposal fail to fulfil the eligibility verification, according to the top ranked scored proposals and within the available financial envelope. (If not, reasons must be encoded in the Evaluation Grid in CRIS this includes the evaluation sheet for experts and delegations, in the Technical Evaluation report and in the letters sent out to applicants.) NO NO

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3. The supporting documents listed hereunder, submitted according to the Guidelines (Section 2.2.5), satisfy all the eligibility criteria of the applicant and its partner(s) (if any).

a. The applicant's statutes. b. The statutes or articles of association of all partners . c. The applicant's external audit report (where applicable)5. d. The Legal Entity Sheet (see annex D) is duly completed and signed by the applicant and is accompanied by the justifying documents requested. e. A financial identification form conforming to the model attached at Annex E. f. Copy of the applicants latest accounts.

The assessment of the eligibility has been conducted by . On the . DECISION 4: The Committee has selected the proposal for funding after having verified its eligibility according to the criteria stipulated in the Guidelines. (If not, reasons must be encoded in the Eligibility Verification Grid in CRIS, in the Eligibility Verification Report in CRIS and in the letters sent out to applicants.)

Please indicate Not Applicable (NA) if your grant does not request an audit report. This is the case for grants of less than 300 000, or for proposals from public bodies.

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