Research Areas


The Chair will focus on four research orientations:



Prosthetics 

Design of flexible tactile sensors and haptic devices that can be used in combination to restore the sense of touch to amputees. This requires sensors that closely mimic humans’ sensory system by localizing points of contact, accurately gauging applied forces and their direction, and perceiving objects’ textures and temperature.



Improve robots’ ability to grip 

Use learning algorithms based on tactile signals to enable robots to detect the sliding motion of objects in their hands, accurately assess the steadiness of their grip, and recognize objects by touch.

Use the new recognition capacities described above to build intelligent algorithms to enable reflexes such as adjusting the hand grip to secure a sliding object.



Safe human-robot interaction

Make robots more agile and safer for people, endow them with the sense of touch to enable them to detect, locate, and gauge contact with their environment and react appropriately. This may be achieved with:

  • New and flexible tactile sensor technology that mimics human skin’s sensory ability
  • Study of the use of these sensors



Touch-control robot programming

Simplify robot programming to enable non-specialists to teach robots easily how to carry out various tasks. This objective may be achieved by simplifying robots’ software interface, but also by endowing robots with the faculty of learning how to carry out tasks through direct demonstration.