Automation and Robotics

WALK-MAN - Whole body Adaptive Locomotion and Manipulation

WALK-MAN is a 4 years integrated project (IP) funded by the European Commission through the call FP7-ICT-2013-10. The project started on September 2013 and has the goal to develop a robotic platform (of an anthropomorphic form) which can operate outside the laboratory space in unstructured environments and work spaces as a result of natural and man-made disasters. The robot will demonstrate new skills including:

PACMAN - Probabilistic and Compositional Representations of Objects for Robotic Manipulation

The aim of the project is to advance technologies for, and understand the principles of cognition and control in complex systems. We will meet this challenge by advancing methods for object perception, representation and manipulation so that a robot is able to robustly manipulate objects even when those objects are unfamiliar, and even though the robot has unreliable perception and action. The proposal is founded on two assumptions.

WEARHAP - Wearable Haptics for Humans and Robots

The complexity of the world around us is creating a demand for cognition-enabled interfaces that will simplify and enhance the way we interact with the environment. Project WEARHAP, developed in this proposal, aims at laying the scientific and technological foundations for wearable haptics, a novel concept for the systematic exploration of haptics in advanced cognitive systems and robotics that will redefine the way humans will cooperate with robots.
The challenge of this new paradigm stems from the need for wearability which is a key element for natural interaction.

Softhands, a theory of SOFT synergies for a new generation of artificial HANDS

Although many advances have been made in the mechatronics and computational hardware of artificial hands, the state of the art appears to be only marginally closer to a satisfactory functional approximation of the human hand than it was twenty years ago. The main reasons for this  invest some fundamental issues in the understanding of the organization and control of hands, and ultimately the lack of a theory to guide us in the search for a principled approach to taming the complexity of hands as the physical embodiments of the sense of active touch, and com

Course on Model Predictive Control

July 9 and 16
September 17 and 24
October 1

2012

10.30 - 12.30
 

Prof. Gabriele Pannocchia
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica
Università di Pisa



PROGRAMME AND MATERIAL OF THE COURSE

 

July: Monday 9, 10:30-12:30

qbrobotics

Qbrobotics aims to foster innovation and drive the diffusion of the pioneering technologies that will propel the next generation of robots. The future of robotics is soft, which means that technology should bring current tools closer to human beings. Soft robotic technologies is the next step in the direction of safe and high performance engineering and qbrobotics aims to free these groundbreaking technologies from a constrained scientific environment, and bring them to everyone day life.

Soft Robotics for Physical Human-Robot Interaction

One of the most revolutionary and challenging features of the next generation of robots will be physical human-robot interaction (phri). pHRI robots will be designed to coexist and cooperate with humans in applications such as assisted industrial manipulation, collaborative assembly, domestic work, entertainment, rehabilitation or medical applications.

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