HANDLE — Developmental Pathway towards Autonomy and Dexterity in Robot In-Hand Manipulation
The HANDLE Integrated Project is part of the EU's seventh Framework Programme (FP7) for Research and Technological Development.
Summary | Objectives | Consortium | Links |
Summary
The HANDLE project aims at understanding how humans perform the manipulation of objects in order to replicate grasping and skilled in-hand movements with an anthropomorphic artificial hand. The goal is to evolve robot grippers from current best practice towards more autonomous, natural and effective articulated hands. The project will focus both on technological developments and fundamental multidisciplinary research in order to endow the proposed robotic hand with advanced perception capabilities, high-level feedback control, and elements of intelligence that allow recognition of objects and context.
The proposed approach integrates research from neuroscience, developmental psychology, cognitive science, robotics, multimodal perception and machine learning. The methods to be developed will be based on an original blend of learning and predicting behaviours from imitation and "babbling" to allow the robot to be capable of responding to gaps in its knowledge. The affordances of an object, not just the geometrical and physical properties, but also the potential uses it provides, will be taken into account to tailor in-hand manipulation in accordance with the intended action.
The project runs from 02/2009 until 01/2013, with a total EC funding of 6.35 Million Euros.
Main Project Objectives
- characterization of object affordances
- learning and imitation of human strategies in handling tasks
- improving skills through 'babbling'
- autonomous in-hand dextrous manipulation
- future artifical hands as 'plug-in' devices
Consortium
- University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
- Shadow Robot Company, Ltd., London, UK
- Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
- Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
- King's College, London, UK
- Oerebro University, Sweden
- University of Hamburg, Germany
- Commissariat a l'energie atomique, France
- Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, Portugal
