13rd – 22nd Aug 2025 Under the warm welcome from UK host, Dr. Richard Suphapol Diteesawat, our ARIA research team, led by Prof. Poramate Manoonpong, Dr. Chaicharn Akkawutvanich, and Mr. Matas Manawakul, attended and presented our current research technologies in the 2nd one-day symposium “Human-cEntred AI and Robotics for Assistive and Rehabilitative Technology towards Good Health and Well-being (HEART)” on Aug 21st, 2025, at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), University of Bristol, UK. This consecutive symposium was a follow-up event after the 1st HEART event held in June this year in Thailand.
On Aug 22nd, 2025, the collaborative team explored together the forthcoming collaborative plans included experiments, student exchange, and funding. The meeting took place at Queen’s building, University of Bristol.
During this visit, the team had a chance to participate in a hands-on soft exosuit workshop and gained more insights into Morphological computation at BRL.
Moreover, during the week, the team had a chance to visit Neuromechanics and Rehabilitation Technology research group at Imperial College, London, UK. On this occasion, Dr. Bruno Grandi Sgambato, postdoc under Prof. Dario Farina, led the lab tour for us and demonstrated his research topic of Ultrasound method based on high density EMG sensor to anticipate muscle movement.
The team also visited Mechanical Intelligence Lab at London South Bank University, London, led by Dr. Hamed Rajabi. Several research topics related to bio-inspired mechanical structures had been presented, for example, insect-inspired drone, vein pattern on insect’s wing, and mandible of dungbeetle towards surgical cutting tool.
Furthermore, the team was invited by Dr Uriel Martinez Hernandez to the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath. For this visit, Dr. Douglas Tilley, postdoc, took us around to several research facilities including gait lab, material and mechanical testing lab, aerospace lab, Team bath, andt Center for Orthopedic biomechanics.
The HEART project, funded by The Academy of Medical Sciences, is a joint UK-Thailand networking collaborative research consortium aiming to foster research collaboration and knowledge exchange between the countries. The project is initiated between UK and Thailand, but will also be a bridge to other participating countries.
More information can be found on: https://heart.vistec.ac.th/