The increasing demand for environmentally friendly, healthier, and better performing formulated products means that the process industry needs more than ever predictive models of formulation performance for rapid, effective, and sustainable screening of new products. Processing flows and end use produce deformations that are extreme compared to what is accessible with existing experimental methods. As a consequence, the effects of extreme deformation are often overlooked without justification. Extreme deformation of structured fluids and soft materials is an unexplored dynamic regime where unexpected phenomena may emerge. New flow-induced microstructures can arise due to periodic forcing that is much faster than the relaxation timescale of the system, leading to collective behaviors and large transient stresses. The goal of this research is to introduce a radically innovative approach to explore and characterize the regime of extreme deformation of structured fluids and interfaces. By combining cutting-edge techniques including acoustofluidics, microfluidics, and high-speed imaging, I will perform pioneering high-precision measurements of macroscopic stresses and evolution of the microstructure. I will also explore strategies to exploit the phenomena emerging upon extreme deformation (collapse under ultrafast compression, yielding) for new processes and for adding new functionality to formulated products. These experimental results, complemented by discrete particle simulations and continuum-scale modeling, will provide new insights that will lay the foundations of the new field of ultrafast soft matter. Ultimately the results of this research program will guide the development of predictive tools that can tackle the time scales of realistic flow conditions for applications to virtual screening of new formulations.

To increase the number of elderly living independently and to improve their quality of life, in this tender we present a novel care robot capable to autonomously assist elderly in perfoming various daily living activities. In our design we aim to provide elderly with both physical as well as social support while keeping their privacy and personal space preserved. A large part of our research will also be devoted to investigating safety regulations and making our solution safe for both elderly and their property. Finally, we plan to adapt our solution to be applicable in case of elderly suffering from ilnesses such as dementia or mobility problems. At first stage of our design process, with our partners from Zuyd University of Applied Sciencies that have long experience in application of technology in healthcare, we plan to perform large social study with independently living elderly to define functional and usability requirements for the care robot design. Using our previous experience in personal robot design from TU Delft Biorobotics Lab, we propose a very affordable robot with limited complexity but able to perform various household tasks. The robot will be equipped with a head and neck used for information acquisition and sensing, a mobile base, an arm with an underactuated gripper able to grasp almost any object no matter its shape or weight and a sliding torso to be able to manipulate at various heights. To allow for easy transfer of elderly, body will be expended with handles so that a robot can be transformed into the autonomous rollator. Regrarding the software functionality, we propose variaty of individual modules responsible for main actions of the robot performing household tasks. These include navigation, manipulation, speech recognition, face recognition, object recognition as well as person tracking and action recogniton. Each individual module directly interacts with the low-level control layer. Additional functions for online learning of users and objects are provided to allow the robot to adapt to the novel environment. Also high level planner that will autonomously plan the actions of the robot dependent of the user behaviour will be provided. Very intuative and easy to use intrerface for user-robot interaction is proposed. Both remote control as well as the fully autonomous behaviour will be given and the users can control robot either through tablet or speech interface. Special attention will be given to elderly with hearing and visual difficulties. Also special attention is given to the safetly of proposed solution. Finally, with experience of our partner Lobeco we plan to bring introduced care robot to the large market.

ROSIN will create a step change in the availability of high-quality intelligent robot software components for the European industry. This is achieved by building on the existing open-source “Robot Operating System” (ROS) framework and leveraging its worldwide community. ROS and its subsidiary ROS-Industrial (European side led by TU Delft and Fraunhofer) is well-known, but its European industrial potential is underestimated. The two main critiques are (1) is the quality on par with industry, and (2) is there enough European industrial interest to justify investing in it? Partially, the answer is “yes and yes”; ample industrial installations are already operational. Partially however, the two questions hold each other in deadlock, because further quality improvement requires industrial investment and vice versa. ROSIN will resolve the deadlock and put Europe in a leading position. For software quality, ROSIN introduces a breakthrough innovation in automated code quality testing led by IT University Copenhagen, complemented with a full palette of quality assurance measures including novel model-in-the-loop continuous integration testing with ABB robots. Simultaneously, more ROS-Industrial tools and components will be created by making 50% of the ROSIN budget available to collaborating European industrial users and developers for so-called Focused Technical Projects. ROSIN maximizes budget efficacy by alleviating yet another deadlock; experience shows that industry will fund ROS-Industrial developments, but only after successful delivery. ROSIN provides pre-financing for developers which will be recovered into a future revolving fund to perpetuate the mechanism. Together with broad education activities (open for any EU party) led by Fachhochshule Aachen and community-building activities led by Fraunhofer, ROSIN will let ROS-Industrial reach critical mass with further self-propelled growth resulting in a widely adopted, high-quality, open-source industrial standard.