The Polytechnic School of the University of Genoa (Universita degli Studi di Genova, UNIGE, unige.it) is ranked within the first three schools of engineering in Italy. DITEN (Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval architecture, www.diten.unige.it), with its research groups active in Electronics, Telecommunications, Circuits and Systems, Electromagnetic Fields is a well-established center of collaborations and contracts with the European Commission, national and international Research Agencies and Industries. It has a scientific staff of about 70 members organized in Research Units.
The ICT Research Unit is active in: electronic systems, microelectronics, and electronics for the information society, signal and image processing, telecommunications, networks, applied electromagnetics, nanotechnology,
ICT biomedical applications.
Among the research topics pursued by the ICT area, relevant to this project are the design and development of electronic systems and natural / artificial complex systems, together with signal and image processing. In particular, remarkable is the focus on biomedical applications. Involvement in research that leads to excellent scientific results and international collaborations is highly encouraged by the Department, which is acquiring increasingly important role at European level placing itself as an institution developing highly innovative technology and research. The Department also includes some major joint laboratories and spin off companies.
The research laboratory involved in the project proposal is the Connected Objects, Smart Materials, Integrated Circuits (COSMIC) lab (www.cosmiclab.diten.unige.it ) led by Prof. Maurizio Valle.
Expertise of COSMIC lab in the research area relevant to the project:
Tactile sensing systems, piezoelectric polymer materials characterization, electronic skin system modeling and design, tactile data processing and information decoding, electronic embedded systems, microelectronics, wireless sensor networks, Machine/Deep learning, IoT.
UNIGE is leader of WP6 of the TACTILITY project. DITEN – COSMIC Lab. is responsible for the electronic skin development and test (i.e. tactile sensing arrays and embedded electronic system) and of the integration on the sensorized glove. Moreover, DITEN – COSMIC Lab. is in charge of the embedded tactile data processing and information extraction methods and tools. DITEN – COSMIC Lab. collaborates with project partner AAU in the design and development of the
communication channel interface and of the transmission data format.
Furthermore, DITEN – COSMIC Lab. has significant contributions in developing real-time feedback for scenario 2 demonstrator and technology validation in WP7, and contributes to several tasks in other WPs.