In recent years, the spread of data-driven approaches for robotic grasp synthesis has come with the increasing need for reliable datasets, which can be built e.g. through video labelling. To this goal, it is important to define suitable rules to characterize the main human grasp types, for easily identifying them in video streams. In this work, we present a novel taxonomy that builds upon the related state of the art, but it is specifically thought for video labelling. It focuses on the interaction of the hand with the environment and accounts for pre-contact phases, bi-manual grasps as well as non-prehensile strategies. This study is complemented with a dataset of labelled videos of subjects performing activities of daily living, for a total of nine hours, and the description of MatLab tools for labelling new videos. Both hands were labelled at any time. We used these labelled data for performing a preliminary statistical description of the occurrences of the here proposed class types.

The need for users’ safety and technology acceptability has incredibly increased with the deployment of co-bots physically interacting with humans in industrial settings, and for people assistance. A well-studied approach to meet these requirements is to ensure human-like robot motions and interactions. In this manuscript, we present a research approach that moves from the understanding of human movements and derives usefull guidelines for the planning of arm movements and the learning of skills for physical interaction of robots with the surrounding environment.

The synergy between musculoskeletal and central nervous systems empowers humans to achieve a high level of motor performance, which is still unmatched in bio-inspired robotic systems. Literature already presents a wide range of robots that mimic the human body. However, under a control point of view, substantial advancements are still needed to fully exploit the new possibilities provided by these systems. In this paper, we test experimentally that an Iterative Learning Control algorithm can be used to reproduce functionalities of the human central nervous system - i.e. learning by repetition, after-effect on known trajectories and anticipatory behavior - while controlling a bio-mimetically actuated robotic arm.

Human beings can achieve a high level of motor performance that is still unmatched in robotic systems. These capabilities can be ascribed to two main enabling factors: (i) the physical proprieties of human musculoskeletal system, and (ii) the effectiveness of the control operated by the central nervous system. Regarding point (i), the introduction of compliant elements in the robotic structure can be regarded as an attempt to bridge the gap between the animal body and the robot one. Soft articulated robots aim at replicating the musculoskeletal characteristics of vertebrates. Yet, substantial advancements are still needed under a control point of view, to fully exploit the new possibilities provided by soft robotic bodies. This paper introduces a control framework that ensures natural movements in articulated soft robots, implementing specific functionalities of the human central nervous system, i.e., learning by repetition, after-effect on known and unknown trajectories, anticipatory behavior, its reactive re-planning, and state covariation in precise task execution. The control architecture we propose has a hierarchical structure composed of two levels. The low level deals with dynamic inversion and focuses on trajectory tracking problems. The high level manages the degree of freedom redundancy, and it allows to control the system through a reduced set of variables. The building blocks of this novel control architecture are well-rooted in the control theory, which can furnish an established vocabulary to describe the functional mechanisms underlying the motor control system. The proposed control architecture is validated through simulations and experiments on a bio-mimetic articulated soft robot.