OBJECTIVES

The objective of MUSHA is to build and control the hands of the future; scientific issues and research topics that the project will investigate are common to two case studies chosen for the demonstration of the results, namely, the manipulation in laparoscopic surgery and the human-like manipulation in daily-life scenarios. The two scenarios are chosen according to the different complexity of the bio-inspired devices that will be built and tested. In particular, in the surgical scenario a three-fingered hand will be considered, while a five-fingered anthropomorphic artificial hand will be considered in the second case study.

• The Three-fingered surgical hand will be tested in minimal invasive laparoscopic surgery. The functionalities and reliability will be tested in a mechanical simulator by the medical staff. Stress of the tissue and time execution of the simulated surgical intervention will be measured to assess the performance.
• The five fingered anthropomorphic hand will be tested in simple tasks such as grasping objects of different shapes, and in typical manipulation activities such as screwing a cup, writing and rolling a ball. Force and vision feedback will be used in a synergy-based control module in order to achieve successfully the tasks.