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), John Hopkins (USA), Pittsburgh (USA), Waseda (JP), Tsukuba (JP) Universities. This research has also recently spun off a company producing and customizing robot hands for other research institutes.

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