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ELLIS Delft Talk by Javier Alonso-Mora

ELLIS Delft Talk by Javier Alonso-Mora 12 April 2022 16:00 (NOTE: the meeting moved from 5th -> 12th) This will be a hybrid meeting This meeting is open for all interested researchers. Motion Planning among Decision-Making Agents: Trajectory Optimization with Learned Cost Functions Abstract We move towards an era of smart cities, where autonomous vehicles will provide on-demand transportation while making our streets safer and mobile robots will coexist with humans. The motion plan of mobile robots and autonomous vehicles must, therefore, account for the interaction with other agents and consider that they are, as well, decision-making entities. For example, when humans drive a car, they are fully aware of their environment and how other drivers and pedestrians may react to their future actions. Towards this objective I will discuss several methods for motion planning and multi-robot coordination that leverage constrained optimization and reinforcement learning to achieve interactive behaviors with safety guarantees. Namely: using inverse reinforcement learning and social value estimation to achieve social behaviors; employing a learned policy to guide the motion planner in dense traffic scenarios or for information gathering; achieving social trajectories by learning a cost function from a dataset of human-driven vehicles; and learning to communicate the relevant information for multi-robot coordination. The methods are of broad applicability, including autonomous vehicles and aerial vehicles. Bio Javier Alonso-Mora is an Associate Professor at the Department of Cognitive Robotics of the Delft University of Technology, the director of the Autonomous Multi-robots Laboratory, a Principal Investigator at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and co-founder of The Routing Company. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree in robotics from ETH Zurich, in partnership with Disney Research Zurich. He serves as associate editor for Springer Autonomous Robots, and has served as associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, the Publications Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems 2021 and associate editor for ICRA, IROS and ICUAS. He is the recipient of several prizes and grants, including an ERC Starting Grant (2021), the ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi-robot Systems (2019), an Amazon Research Award (2019) and a talent scheme VENI award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2017). More info: https://www.autonomousrobots.nl/ To join this event, please contact Frans Oliehoek .

Product Evaluation Laboratory (PEL)

The Product Evaluation Laboratory, also referred to as the PEL or Product Lab , is a research facility within TU Delft. It offers services and facilities for conducting consumer research. It is special in the fact that it has its own consumer panel. Become a member Click here to join the PEL panel. You can register from the age of 16. Take a look inside: Panel members More information for panel members can be found here. On this page you can change your personal details and/or register for our panel. Research Information about completed, ongoing and upcoming research can be found here. Researchers More information for researchers, such as our facilities and the types of studies we support, can be found here. Contact Find out about how to get in touch with us here.

van Duijvenbode, J.R.

Profile TU Delft (2018 – current) Ph.D. candidate in Resource Engineering I obtained a MSc degree in the European Mining Course (EMC) from Delft University of Technology, Aalto University and RWTH Aachen. My master thesis was about: Development and Validation of Short-term Mine Planning Optimization Algorithms for a Sublevel Stoping Operation with Backfilling. Research PhD research into the behavioural Geology – Understanding how differences in geology influence metallurgical performance. The research topic consists of integrating collected information on metallurgical properties, directly or through proxies back into the resource model. The consideration of metallurgical costs is the only way forward to obtain truly optimized mining decisions, accounting for constraints and bottlenecks in the comminution circuit and chemical processing plant. This is important to better characterize metallurgical behavior of the plant feed, which allows for a morel optimal selection of process control settings. The envisioned solution will result in an increased recovery in combination with a lower utilization of energy and chemicals per tonne of processed material (lower environmental footprint). Consequently, overall OPEX will drop making lower grade ore economic while increasing the mineral resources that are available for conversion to ore reserves (lesser need to open up new mines). Moreover, a better characterization of mining blocks reduces the unintended processing of waste due to lower overall classification errors. Copromotor: Dr. M. Soleymani Shishvan Promotor(s): Dr. M. Buxton and Prof. Jan Dirk Jansen Jeroen van Duijvenbode PhD Candidate + 31 15 27 82262 J.R.vanDuijvenbode@tudelft.nl Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Building 23 Stevinweg 1 / PO-box 5048 2628 CN Delft / 2600 GA Delft Room number: 3.21

Research

ELLIS Delft Talk by Guillaume Rongier

ELLIS Delft Talk by Guillaume Rongier Going beyond empirical relationships in geology: The example of total organic carbon 01 February 2022 16:00 Abstract While machine learning has a long history in geology, empirical relationships remain widely used. Through the example of total organic carbon (TOC), this talk will illustrate the close links between empirical relationships and machine learning, and the benefits of turning to machine learning. TOC is a measure of the proportion of organic carbon in rock samples typically gathered from boreholes. It can be used to assess the potential for hydrocarbons, understand rock mechanics, or assess reducing conditions for basin-hosted mineral systems, and is paramount when seeking to understand variations in paleo-environmental conditions. Since gathering and analyzing rock samples is expensive, empirical relationships have been developed to predict TOC from well logs, which are based on more widely available geophysical measurements into boreholes. Those empirical relationships come from geological and petrophysical principles implemented in mathematical models manually fitted to the data. This leads to several limitations, mainly poor generalization, inability to quantify uncertainties, time-consuming and subjective calibration that leads to reproducibility issues. But those empirical relationships can be rewritten as linear regressions, a simple change that solves many of the previous limitations. Turning to more advanced machine learning methods improves predictions by taking into account the non-linearity and variability in the data. Using the expert knowledge behind empirical relationships as input besides well logs improves the predictions as well: this shows that leveraging geological and petrophysical concepts through feature selection and engineering boosts machine learning performances. To join this event, please contact Frans Oliehoek .

How to present to keep your audience's attention | 19 April

How to present to keep your audience's attention | 19 April 19 April 2022 15:00 till 16:00 - Location: Auditorium - By: 3ME An inspirational session with Mark Robinson, known for his TED talk . What makes a great presentation? Why are so many workplace presentations so boring?! And what can you do to ensure that, the next time you give a presentation, you keep everyone's attention, from your first word to the last? Mark Robinson , TEDx speaker, presentation skills trainer, author and coach will share with us: The three essential elements of a great presentation; What question you need to ask yourself when preparing your presentation and; How to start your presentation to get everyone listening! This will be an interactive, fun and, above all, practical session. Sign up if you want to join!

Opening up and open access to DOCOMOMO information

Modern buildings that are threatened with demolition or disfigurement are regularly brought to the attention of DOCOMOMO International. In many cases the international DOCOMOMO community plays an important role in the preservation of these threatened buildings. To make the knowledge and information available for everyone, a lot of the material is made available online.

TRANSFORM-CE

Design researchers from TU Delft work together with the municipalities of Almere and Manchester to investigate how to increase the recycling rate of single use plastic (through injection-extrusion moulding and 3D printing), as well as to enhance uptake of recycled plastics by business and consumers.

Education

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ELLIS Delft Talk by Javier Alonso-Mora

ELLIS Delft Talk by Javier Alonso-Mora 12 April 2022 16:00 (NOTE: the meeting moved from 5th -> 12th) This will be a hybrid meeting This meeting is open for all interested researchers. Motion Planning among Decision-Making Agents: Trajectory Optimization with Learned Cost Functions Abstract We move towards an era of smart cities, where autonomous vehicles will provide on-demand transportation while making our streets safer and mobile robots will coexist with humans. The motion plan of mobile robots and autonomous vehicles must, therefore, account for the interaction with other agents and consider that they are, as well, decision-making entities. For example, when humans drive a car, they are fully aware of their environment and how other drivers and pedestrians may react to their future actions. Towards this objective I will discuss several methods for motion planning and multi-robot coordination that leverage constrained optimization and reinforcement learning to achieve interactive behaviors with safety guarantees. Namely: using inverse reinforcement learning and social value estimation to achieve social behaviors; employing a learned policy to guide the motion planner in dense traffic scenarios or for information gathering; achieving social trajectories by learning a cost function from a dataset of human-driven vehicles; and learning to communicate the relevant information for multi-robot coordination. The methods are of broad applicability, including autonomous vehicles and aerial vehicles. Bio Javier Alonso-Mora is an Associate Professor at the Department of Cognitive Robotics of the Delft University of Technology, the director of the Autonomous Multi-robots Laboratory, a Principal Investigator at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and co-founder of The Routing Company. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree in robotics from ETH Zurich, in partnership with Disney Research Zurich. He serves as associate editor for Springer Autonomous Robots, and has served as associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, the Publications Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems 2021 and associate editor for ICRA, IROS and ICUAS. He is the recipient of several prizes and grants, including an ERC Starting Grant (2021), the ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi-robot Systems (2019), an Amazon Research Award (2019) and a talent scheme VENI award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2017). More info: https://www.autonomousrobots.nl/ To join this event, please contact Frans Oliehoek .

Product Evaluation Laboratory (PEL)

The Product Evaluation Laboratory, also referred to as the PEL or Product Lab , is a research facility within TU Delft. It offers services and facilities for conducting consumer research. It is special in the fact that it has its own consumer panel. Become a member Click here to join the PEL panel. You can register from the age of 16. Take a look inside: Panel members More information for panel members can be found here. On this page you can change your personal details and/or register for our panel. Research Information about completed, ongoing and upcoming research can be found here. Researchers More information for researchers, such as our facilities and the types of studies we support, can be found here. Contact Find out about how to get in touch with us here.

van Duijvenbode, J.R.

Profile TU Delft (2018 – current) Ph.D. candidate in Resource Engineering I obtained a MSc degree in the European Mining Course (EMC) from Delft University of Technology, Aalto University and RWTH Aachen. My master thesis was about: Development and Validation of Short-term Mine Planning Optimization Algorithms for a Sublevel Stoping Operation with Backfilling. Research PhD research into the behavioural Geology – Understanding how differences in geology influence metallurgical performance. The research topic consists of integrating collected information on metallurgical properties, directly or through proxies back into the resource model. The consideration of metallurgical costs is the only way forward to obtain truly optimized mining decisions, accounting for constraints and bottlenecks in the comminution circuit and chemical processing plant. This is important to better characterize metallurgical behavior of the plant feed, which allows for a morel optimal selection of process control settings. The envisioned solution will result in an increased recovery in combination with a lower utilization of energy and chemicals per tonne of processed material (lower environmental footprint). Consequently, overall OPEX will drop making lower grade ore economic while increasing the mineral resources that are available for conversion to ore reserves (lesser need to open up new mines). Moreover, a better characterization of mining blocks reduces the unintended processing of waste due to lower overall classification errors. Copromotor: Dr. M. Soleymani Shishvan Promotor(s): Dr. M. Buxton and Prof. Jan Dirk Jansen Jeroen van Duijvenbode PhD Candidate + 31 15 27 82262 J.R.vanDuijvenbode@tudelft.nl Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Building 23 Stevinweg 1 / PO-box 5048 2628 CN Delft / 2600 GA Delft Room number: 3.21

Research

ELLIS Delft Talk by Guillaume Rongier

ELLIS Delft Talk by Guillaume Rongier Going beyond empirical relationships in geology: The example of total organic carbon 01 February 2022 16:00 Abstract While machine learning has a long history in geology, empirical relationships remain widely used. Through the example of total organic carbon (TOC), this talk will illustrate the close links between empirical relationships and machine learning, and the benefits of turning to machine learning. TOC is a measure of the proportion of organic carbon in rock samples typically gathered from boreholes. It can be used to assess the potential for hydrocarbons, understand rock mechanics, or assess reducing conditions for basin-hosted mineral systems, and is paramount when seeking to understand variations in paleo-environmental conditions. Since gathering and analyzing rock samples is expensive, empirical relationships have been developed to predict TOC from well logs, which are based on more widely available geophysical measurements into boreholes. Those empirical relationships come from geological and petrophysical principles implemented in mathematical models manually fitted to the data. This leads to several limitations, mainly poor generalization, inability to quantify uncertainties, time-consuming and subjective calibration that leads to reproducibility issues. But those empirical relationships can be rewritten as linear regressions, a simple change that solves many of the previous limitations. Turning to more advanced machine learning methods improves predictions by taking into account the non-linearity and variability in the data. Using the expert knowledge behind empirical relationships as input besides well logs improves the predictions as well: this shows that leveraging geological and petrophysical concepts through feature selection and engineering boosts machine learning performances. To join this event, please contact Frans Oliehoek .

How to present to keep your audience's attention | 19 April

How to present to keep your audience's attention | 19 April 19 April 2022 15:00 till 16:00 - Location: Auditorium - By: 3ME An inspirational session with Mark Robinson, known for his TED talk . What makes a great presentation? Why are so many workplace presentations so boring?! And what can you do to ensure that, the next time you give a presentation, you keep everyone's attention, from your first word to the last? Mark Robinson , TEDx speaker, presentation skills trainer, author and coach will share with us: The three essential elements of a great presentation; What question you need to ask yourself when preparing your presentation and; How to start your presentation to get everyone listening! This will be an interactive, fun and, above all, practical session. Sign up if you want to join!

Opening up and open access to DOCOMOMO information

Modern buildings that are threatened with demolition or disfigurement are regularly brought to the attention of DOCOMOMO International. In many cases the international DOCOMOMO community plays an important role in the preservation of these threatened buildings. To make the knowledge and information available for everyone, a lot of the material is made available online.

TRANSFORM-CE

Design researchers from TU Delft work together with the municipalities of Almere and Manchester to investigate how to increase the recycling rate of single use plastic (through injection-extrusion moulding and 3D printing), as well as to enhance uptake of recycled plastics by business and consumers.

Education
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Green ammonia remains a challenge, but researchers make significant progress

The production of ammonia, essential for fertiliser production, is responsible for almost 1.5% of global carbon emissions. This needs to be greener, which is why researchers have been looking for sustainable alternatives for years.

NWO funding for flexible power demand in electrically driven industry

NWO is funding two projects to explore ways to make the power demand of industry more flexible, allowing it to better align with future energy supplies. One of these projects, “DEFLAME,” is led by Machteld van den Broek from TU Delft. Solar and wind power generate variable amounts of electricity, while today’s industry demands a relatively constant supply. Adjustments are needed to prepare industry for a power supply based on sun and wind. These adjustments include technical, economic, and social adaptations that are being researched collaboratively by academic institutions and industry partners in these two projects. They also aim to address the barriers that hinder such adaptations. About DEFLAME DEFLAME stands for Direct Electrification of Industrial Heat Demand supported by Flexibility at Multiple Levels and their Exchanges (DEFLAME). This project aims to make the Dutch process industry—particularly the chemical and food industries—more resilient and climate-neutral by electrifying industrial heat using flexible solutions. Van den Broek explains, “For instance, we could scale installations up or down, store heat in underground systems, and/or store electricity in batteries, so that industry can better respond to fluctuations in the energy network.” This effort requires collaboration across multiple levels: technology, individual plants, industrial clusters, and national and international energy systems. DEFLAME focuses on removing obstacles to electrifying low-temperature heat (up to 400°C) with efficient technology. “This kind of heat is used in many processes. It’s essential to drive the right chemical reactions, and it’s also needed for drying, distillation, and evaporation processes. For example, in the crystallisation process to turn sugar beets into sugar, or in salt extraction,” Van den Broek explains. In crystallisation processes, for instance, mechanical vapour recompression can be used. In this process, vapours are compressed by an electrically driven compressor and then reused to heat the evaporator. “This saves energy, as it uses residual heat and allows for electricity to be sourced cleanly. With solar and wind, unlike with gas, the power supply is variable. If we want to electrify industry, businesses and technology need to be able to respond flexibly to this, for example, by storing heat as a cluster or building flexibility into the electrical system.” DEFLAME will identify strategies and institutional arrangements to unlock these solutions from multiple levels and with an interdisciplinary approach. Van den Broek states, “I look forward to taking an important step together with our partners to advance industrial electrification in the Netherlands. This is an essential part of the energy transition.” Consortium Partners The consortium partners include Atlas Copco, Cosun, ISPT, Nobian, Oranje Wind Power II C.V./RWE, Smart Port, Stedin, Tennet, TNO, TU Delft, and TU Eindhoven. Read the NWO press release . Prof.dr.ir. M.A. (Machteld) van den Broek

Students Amos Yusuf, Mick Dam & Bas Brouwer winners of Mekel Prize 2024

Master students Amos Yusuf, from the ME faculty (Mick Dam, from the EEMCS faculty and graduate Bas Brouwer have won the Mekel Prize 2024 for the best extra scientific activity at TU Delft: the development of an initiative that brings master students into the classroom teaching sciences to the younger generations. The prize was ceremonially awarded by prof Tim van den Hagen on 13 November after the Van Hasselt Lecture at the Prinsenhof, Delft. They received a statue of Professor Jan Mekel and 1.500,- to spend on their project. Insights into climate change are being openly doubted. Funding for important educational efforts and research are being withdrawn. Short clips – so called “reels” – on Youtube and TikTok threaten to simplify complex political and social problems. AI fakes befuddle what is true and what is not. The voices of science that contribute to those discussion with modesty, careful argument and scepticism, are drowned in noise. This poses a threat for universities like TU Delft, who strive to increase student numbers, who benefit from diverse student populations and aim to pass on their knowledge and scientific virtues to the next generation. It is, therefore, alarming that student enrolments to Bachelor and Master Programs at TU Delft have declined in the past year. Students in front of the class The project is aimed to make the sciences more appealing to the next generation. They have identified the problem that students tend miss out on the opportunity of entering a higher education trajectory in the Beta sciences – because they have a wrong picture of such education. In their mind, they depict it as boring and dry. In his pilot lecture at the Stanislas VMBO in Delft, Amos Yusuf has successfully challenged this image. He shared his enthusiasm for the field of robotics and presented himself as a positive role model to the pupils. And in return the excitement of the high school students is palpable in the videos and pictures from the day. The spark of science fills their eyes. Bas Brouwer Mick Dam are the founders of NUVO – the platform that facilitates the engagement of Master Students in high school education in Delft Their efforts offer TU Delft Master Students a valuable learning moment: By sharing insights from their fields with pupils at high school in an educational setting, our students can find identify their own misunderstandings of their subject, learn to speak in front of non-scientific audiences and peak into education as a work field they themselves might not have considered. An extraordinary commitment According to the Mekel jury, the project scored well on all the criteria (risk mitigation, inclusiveness, transparency and societal relevance). However, it was the extraordinary commitment of Amos who was fully immersed during his Master Project and the efforts of Brouwer and Dam that brought together teaching and research which is integral to academic culture that made the project stand out. About the Mekel Prize The Mekel Prize will be awarded to the most socially responsible research project or extra-scientific activity (e.g. founding of an NGO or organization, an initiative or realization of an event or other impactful project) by an employee or group of employees of TU Delft – projects that showcase in an outstanding fashion that they have been committed from the beginning to relevant moral and societal values and have been aware of and tried to mitigate as much as possible in innovative ways the risks involved in their research. The award recognizes such efforts and wants to encourage the responsible development of science and technology at TU Delft in the future. For furthermore information About the project: https://www.de-nuvo.nl/video-robotica-pilot/ About the Mekel Prize: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/tpm/our-faculty/departments/values-technology-and-innovation/sections/ethics-philosophy-of-technology/mekel-prize

The ENHANCE Diversity Seed Fund

Are you a student at TU Delft or another ENHANCE university with a passion for promoting diversity and inclusion? The ENHANCE Diversity Seed Fund is your chance to turn that passion into action. ENHANCE provides funding to support innovative, student-led projects that address key challenges related to inclusion and diversity within our academic communities. Key Details: Funding Available: Up to 1500 Euros per project in the 1st round! Eligibility: Students from ENHANCE member universities. Staff can also join student-led initiatives. Application Deadline: 8 January 2025. More information: Join the online Information Event on the 26 November 2024 16:00-17:00 CET on Zoom . More information: enhanceuniversity.eu/diversity/diversityseedfund/

New catheter technology promises safer and more efficient treatment of blood vessels

Each year, more than 200 million catheters are used worldwide to treat vascular diseases, including heart disease and artery stenosis. When navigating into blood vessels, friction between the catheter and the vessel wall can cause major complications. With a new innovative catheter technology, Mostafa Atalla and colleagues can change the friction from having grip to completely slippery with the flick of a switch. Their design improves the safety and efficiency of endovascular procedures. The findings have been published in IEEE. Catheter with variable friction The prototype of the new catheter features advanced friction control modules to precisely control the friction between the catheter and the vessel wall. The friction is modulated via ultrasonic vibrations, which overpressure the thin fluid layer. This innovative variable friction technology makes it possible to switch between low friction for smooth navigation through the vessel and high friction for optimal stability during the procedure. In a proof-of-concept, Atalla and his team show that the prototype significantly reduces friction, averaging 60% on rigid surfaces and 11% on soft surfaces. Experiments on animal aortic tissue confirm the promising results of this technology and its potential for medical applications. Fully assembled catheters The researchers tested the prototype during friction experiments on different tissue types. They are also investigating how the technology can be applied to other procedures, such as bowel interventions. More information Publicatie DOI : 10.1109/TMRB.2024.3464672 Toward Variable-Friction Catheters Using Ultrasonic Lubrication | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore Mostafa Atalla: m.a.a.atalla@tudelft.nl Aimee Sakes: a.sakes@tudelft.nl Michaël Wiertlewski: m.wiertlewski@tudelft.nl Would you like to know more and/or attend a demonstration of the prototype please contact me: Fien Bosman, press officer Health TU Delft: f.j.bosman@tudelft.nl/ 0624953733

Design and imagination as essential tools during the climate crisis

In Nature Partner Journals, ten researchers advocate the use of imagination in tackling the climate crisis. They focus specifically on urbanising river deltas, which are of great social and economic importance and highly vulnerable to climate change. "We scientists should not merely outline doomsday scenarios," says Professor Chris Zevenbergen. "Create a vision for people to believe in and work towards.”

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