TY - CONF T1 - From humans to robots: The role of cutaneous impairment in human environmental constraint exploitation to inform the design of robotic hands T2 - Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT), 2017 9th International Congress on Y1 - 2017 A1 - G. Averta A1 - C. Della Santina A1 - E. Battaglia A1 - S. Ciotti A1 - V. Arapi A1 - S. Fani A1 - M. Bianchi AB -

Human hands are capable of a variety of movements, thanks to their extraordinary biomechanical structure and rely- ing on the richness of human tactile information. Recently, soft robotic hands have opened exciting possibilities and, at the same time, new issues related to planning and control. In this work, we propose to study human strategies in environmental constraint exploitation to grasp objects from a table. We have considered both the case where participants’ fingertips were free and with a rigid shell worn on them to understand the role of cutaneous touch. Main kinematic strategies were quantified and classified in an unsupervised manner. The principal strategies appear to be consistent in both experimental conditions, although cluster cardinality differs. Furthermore, as expected, tactile feedback improves both grasp precision and quality performance. Results opens interesting perspective for sensing and control of soft manipulators.

JF - Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT), 2017 9th International Congress on PB - IEEE CY - Munich N1 -

This work has been awarded with the "Best Student Paper Award" and the "Best Paper in Session - Robotics"

ER - TY - CONF T1 - A Finite Element Model of Tactile Flow for Softness Perception T2 - 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC2015) Y1 - 2015 A1 - E. Battaglia A1 - M. Bianchi A1 - M. L. D'Angelo A1 - M. D'Imperio A1 - F. Cannella A1 - E. P. Scilingo A1 - A. Bicchi KW - Haptics KW - Robotics JF - 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC2015) PB - IEEE CY - Milano, Italy, August 25th-29th, 2015 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7318884 N1 -

This work was partially supported by the European Research Council under the ERC Advanced Grant no. 291166 SoftHands (A Theory of Soft Synergies for a New Generation of Artificial Hands) and under the grant agreement no. 601165 Wearhap (Wearable Haptics for Humans and Robots), within the FP7/2007-2013 program: Cognitive Systems and Robotics.

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