Project Leader: Maria Chiara Carrozza

Dexterous sensorized hands for humanoid robotics and prosthetics have been studied at ARTS Lab since 1999; several design solutions and technologies have been investigated and exploited in a number of prototypes.



After a first design approach based on intrinsic micro-actuation (RTR1 hand), new bio-inspired under-actuated mechanisms have been deeply investigated and cable-driven artificial hands have been designed and developed both for prosthetics like RTR 2 and RTR 3 hands, and for humanoid robotics: PALOMA and ROBOCASA hands. The latter is installed on a robot at the Italy-Japan? joint ROBOCASA laboratory, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Other artificial hands for humanoid robotics research have been developed; in particular the SSSA ROBOTCUB hand, the Genie hand (on the humanoid robot at Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, University of Tsukuba, Japan) and the EXPER II hand (within a program funded by Toyota Motor Europe). Research on prosthetics instead, has progressed with European and US funding programs: CYBERHAND, RPP, SMARTHAND. In particular within the CYBERHAND IST-FET project, the concept of the first cybernetic hand system has been conceived and the CyberHand platform has been developed; such platform has been lately (December 2008) employed within the NEUROBOTICS project for the first experiment in Europe (3rd worldwide ever) of a “bionic hand” neuro-controlled by a human.

Hands developed at ARTS Lab have been known by academia for a long time, and many prototypes within research projects and collaboration have been used as advanced neuroscience and robotic tools by researchers from many universities; in the past 2 years by Lund (SE), Aalborg (DK), Campus Biomedico (Rome) Universities, Santa Lucia Hospital (Rome), Pittsburgh (USA), Waseda (JP), Tsukuba (JP) Universities. This research has also recently spun out a company producing and customizing robot hands for other research institutes: Prensilia.

The ARTS Lab robotic hands also integrate bio-inspired tactile sensors and are endowed with proprioception (perception of the internal parameters of the robotic system) and exteroception (perception of the external environment).
An innovative strain-gages based sensor for detecting the tension of tendons has been developed that is fundamental for hand control