OBJECTIVE One goal of neuromorphic engineering is to create 'realistic' robotic systems that interact with the physical world by adopting neuromechanical principles from biology. Critical to this is the methodology to implement the spinal circuitry responsible for the behavior of afferented muscles. At its core, muscle afferentation is the closed-loop behavior arising from the interactions amon...

Humans regularly feel a sense of agency (SoA) over events where the causal link between action and outcome is extremely indirect. We have investigated how intermediate (here, a robotic hand) events that intervene between action and outcome may alter SoA, using intentional binding measures. The robotic hand either performed the same movement as the participant (active congruent), or performed a ...

The haptic hand is a greatly simplified robotic hand that is designed to mirror the human hand and provide haptic force feedback for applications in music. The “fingers” of the haptic hand device are laid out to align with four of the fingers of the human hand. A key is placed on each of the “fingers” so that a human hand can perform music by interacting with the keys. The haptic hand is distin...

Recent advances in the field of intelligent robotic manipulation pursue providing hands with touch sensitivity. Haptic perception encompasses sensing modalities encountered sense (e.g., tactile and kinesthetic sensations). This letter focuses on multimodal object recognition proposes analytical data-driven methodologies to fuse tactile- kinesthetic-based classification results. The procedure is...

In this paper, we present an overview of our work in the development, realization, dynamic analysis, and simulation of an innovative sensing method for the prevention of object slip during robotic grasping and manipulation. The new sensor is biologically inspired, and measures the extension of a rubber skin to detect impending slip before it occurs, and to provide feedback for active control of...

The manipulation of biological objects is a key technology necessary for many new applications in Bio-MEMS. In this paper, we will report on our preliminary experimental work in using an Ionic Conducting Polymer Film (ICPF) to develop a biological cell robotic gripper. The ability of ICPF actuators to give large deflection with small input voltage (~5V) will allow many new applications to be de...

Robotic grasping of deformable objects is inherently different from that of rigid objects, and is an under-researched area. Difficulties arise not only from expensive deformable modeling, but also from the changing object geometry under grasping force. This dissertation studies strategies of grasping deformable objects using two robotic fingers. Discovering the inapplicability of the traditiona...

OBJECTIVE This article describes the effect of a robotic device combined with repetitive-task practice (RTP) on upper-extremity function in a patient with chronic stroke. METHOD The client was a 32-year-old woman, 11 months after stroke, with minimal wrist and finger movement. She received approximately 48 hr of intervention split evenly between a robotic device (Hand Mentor) and RTP during 3...

Tactile sensors are needed for effectively controlling the interaction between a robotic hand and the environment, e.g., during manipulation of objects, or for the tactile exploration of unstructured environments, especially when other sensing modalities, such as vision or audition, become ineffective. In the case of hand prostheses, mainly intended for dexterous manipulation of daily living ob...

In many robotic applications, manipulation planning for an object free to slide on a surface is an import; oblem. Physical analysis of the object's motion is made difficult by the absence of information about 1 stribution of support of die object, and of the resulting frictional forces. This paper describes a n iproach to the analysis of sliding motion. The instantaneous motion of the object ca...