Dr.ir. E.C. Dertien | People Pages: Find employees & contact details

I have a deep passion for building Robotics, resulting in many robot(related) projects inside and outside University. In 2004 I finished an internship at the ' Shadow Robot Company' in London, working on air-muscle control of their famous humanoid hand and an eight-legged walking robot. After my graduation work on 'Dribbel' in 2005, a powered 'passive dynamic' walking robot, I continued to work on energy-efficient actuation of (walking) robots. I have been a member of the Dutch Robotics team participating in the RoboCup in 2008 and 2009. In 2014 I completed my PhD research on the development of a pipe inspection robot for life gas Mains in which rapid manufacturing (3D printing) plays a major role. More info can be found in the thesis. Currently I am involved in a number of research projects related to social robotics, wearables (soft robotics) WEAFING and inspection robots TISCALI and Smart Tooling.

I am involved as a researcher and educator in the bachelor programme ' Creative Technology' teaching courses on Programming and Physical Computing, Sensors and a creative hackathon. In the I-Tech programme I give two design-oriented courses: Mastering Tinkering and Social Robot Design. Other contributions are the CuriousU summerschool on Robot Interaction Design and an introduction into robotics in the 'Smart Cities' HTHT module.

Furthermore, I try to maintain a blog on personal DIY projects at retrointerfacing.com, a central site on my activities at edwindertien.nl and a site on technical activities for art and theatre at kunstentechniekwerk.nl. Since 2013 I am co-founder of the ASSortiMENS foundation running a FabLab inspired workshop for people with autism.

Expertise

Computer Science
- Robot
- Design
- Human Robot Interaction
- Communication
- Participatory Design
- Reinforcement Learning
- Programs
- Building-Blocks

Organisations

Publications

2024

Improvisation Theatre as HRI simulation tool (2024)In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Movement and Computing: MOCO 2024 Beyond Control. Article 5 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series). Association for Computing Machinery. Dertien, E., Reidsma, D. & Van Delden, R.https://doi.org/10.1145/3658852.3659067Perception Threshold for Pressure by a Soft Textile Actuator (2024)IEEE transactions on haptics, 17(4), 625-636. Weda, J., Mader, A., Souri, H., Dertien, E. & van Erp, J.https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2024.3370835

2023

Dramatic voids and how to find them: In-pipe condition assessment of sewer pipes (2023)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT]. University of Twente. Noshahri, H.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036559072Robotics for autonomous cable slicing: The design and development of a robot for automatic removal of the semiconducting insulation shield for medium-voltage cables (2023)[Thesis › EngD Thesis]. University of Twente. Elderhorst, T.In-Pipe Stress-Wave-Based Detection of Voids Behind Concrete Sewer Pipes (2023)In Progressive and Integrative Ideas and Applications of Engineering Systems Under the Framework of IOT and AI : Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Engineering Applications (pp. 3-15) (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering; Vol. 1076 LNEE). Springer. Noshahri, H. & Dertien, E.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6303-4_1Tinkering with Social Touch Technology (2023)Frontiers of Computer Science, 5. Article 848023. Mader, A. H., Weda, J., Dertien, E. C. & van Erp, J. B. F.https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2023.848023

2022

Understanding Design Preferences for Robots for Pain Management: A Co-Design Study (2022)In HRI 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 1124-1129) (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction; Vol. 2022-March). IEEE. Zhang, F., Broz, F., Dertien, E., Kousi, N., Van Gurp, J. A. M., Ferrari, O. I., Malagon, I. & Barakova, E. I.https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889542Demo: Mckibben haptic sleeve (2022)[Contribution to conference › Other] 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022. Weda, J., Hennell, E., Reibring, M., Cedermalm, S., Eklöv, L., Håkansson, M., Nordström, J., Dertien, E. C., Mader, A. H., Jager, E. W. H. & van Erp, J. B. F.Towards Autonomous Pipeline Inspection with Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (2022)In Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 6 - Results from the 9th International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications (pp. 259-271) (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems; Vol. 429 LNNS). Springer. Botteghi, N., Grefte, L., Poel, M., Sirmacek, B., Brune, C., Dertien, E. & Stramigioli, S.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97672-9_23

2021

Linking sewer condition assessment methods to asset managers’ data-needs (2021)Automation in construction, 131. Article 103878. Noshahri, H., olde Scholtenhuis, L. L., Doree, A. G. & Dertien, E. C.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2021.103878

Other contributions

Make Magazine # 50 featured our work on pneumatic wearables

Research profiles

I teach mainly in the BSc program Creative Technology and in the I-Tech MSc program. A short introduction to my MSc courses can be found in this video.

I like to use a hands-on approach, always linking theory to practical (tangible) experience. By building things for real, as quickly and as realistic as possible, you can discover so many interesting aspects of your design problem, that simply don't show up on the whiteboard or in calculation.

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2023/2024

I am (part-time) employed as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Twente. I teach mostly in the Creative Technology BSc program and the Interaction Technology MSc program. As a researcher, I am affiliated with the Robotics and Mechatronics group and with the DesignLab. I work on research projects involving social robotics and wearables – and industrial robots for service and maintenance.

Current projects

tinkering

A topic I am much interested in, from the perspective as maker and educator, is ‘tinkering’. Together with Angelika Mader, we try to find a place to -fit- tinkering into academia, both in (co)design methods for artefacts, tangibles and embodiment as well as a method for teaching and education. We teach an MSc level course ‘Mastering Tinkering’, not in the least for ourselves to increase our understanding. We have been developing and piloting a number of tinkering toolkits for wearable technology.

WEAFING

Wearable Electroactive Fabrics Integrated in Garments

Goal of the EU funded project WEAFING is to develop actuated haptic wearables powered by woven or knitted electroactive polymers. At the University of Twente two parts of this project are researched: the haptics (in the HMI group) and modelling and simulation (in the RaM group)

Finished projects

PIRATE

Pipe Inspection Robot for Autonomous Exploration

From 2006 to 2014 I have been working on a Pipe Inspection Robot for Autonomous Exploration as part of a PhD research at the University of Twente. The thesis has been downloaded more than 2000 times. Recently, development has continued in the project SmartTooling.

As an invited speaker I really enjoy sharing my enthusiasm as maker and designer, I think it is very important that IF we continue to use technology in a sustainable way, we should be able to take it apart, repair it, improve it and make it our own.

From the listed media appearances below I'm most fond of contributing to an episode of 'Het Klokhuis' - I remember watching this program as a child, so it felt really special to be on the other side of the camera for once. I seriously enjoy the medium television, and due to covid-19 have been enthusiastically recording my own lectures.

In the press

News on utwente.nl

Address

University of Twente

Carré (building no. 15), room C3413
Hallenweg 23
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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