2023-05-22 14:05:20
Time.news – Robotic and prosthetic hands available on the market are increasingly sophisticated, but are not yet able to restore the sense of touch to the wearer. An article just published in Science Robotics entitled “A hierarchical sensorimotor control framework for human-in-the-loop robotic hands” presents an innovative approach on this topic: depending on the context and the type of application considered, the artificial limb control occurs at different degrees of sharing between human and machine.
“Human interaction with the world – explained Lucia Seminara, first author of the work and professor at the University of Genoa in the Department of naval, electrical, electronic and telecommunications engineering – is crucially based on touch. The available robotic and prosthetic hands on the market are equipped with increasingly sophisticated articulations but typically lack “tactile feedback”, despite the large variety of sensors which can be integrated onto the artificial hand as an electronic skin. This means that the current challenge is to effectively interface humans with these touch-enabled artificial limbs. To address this challenge, we take inspiration from the hierarchical principles of human sensorimotor control to propose a conceptual framework where artificial limb control is shared between the machine and the human, with a degree of sharing depending on the context and the type of application considered”.
“This conceptual framework – he added – makes it possible to clearly identify research lines that could lead to the development of artificial hands equipped with a sense of touch that are able to communicate effectively with the human being. The shared control paradigm can be used in a variety of applications.At one extreme there are contexts such as the prosthetic one, in which the human being must be able to have complete control of the artificial limb, except in those situations in which the artificial limb could act autonomously by mimicking the reflexes managed by the autonomic nervous system in humans. At the other extreme is there autonomous roboticsin which the robot has its own autonomy and the interaction between the two autonomous agents (human-robot) is limited to phases of synchronization”.
#Robotic #hands #sense #touch