As a developmental pathway towards autonomy and dexterity in robot in-hand manipulation, HANDLE is a Large Scale IP project coordinated by the university Pierre and Marie Curie of Paris and include a consortium formed by nine partners from six EU countries: France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Germany.
The TACO project aims at enhancing the abilities of service robots by improving the sensing system with real 3D foveation properties and to increase their ability to interact with their natural environment in a more natural and human-like way.
The PV-Servitor project focuses on concepts for a fully autonomous cleaning robot for ground mounted large scale photovoltaic power plants consisting of 100 kW and over.
STIFF-FLOP is researching how to take some of the new capabilities in soft robotics and apply them to the development of tools for endoscopic surgery. This project takes inspiration from octopus tentacles for the design of flexible soft robots.
DEXDEB is researching meat deboning. Taking apart an animal carcass to produce high-quality pieces of meat is a skilled but unpleasant and dangerous task. In DEXDEB we are looking at two designs of robotic hand and using them as the “left hand” that pulls at the meat, while a human operator slices the meat with a knife held in their right hand. This will provide DEXDEB with a baseline for doing more complex human-robot interaction work later.
HYFLAM is investigating the role of robotics in biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories. Working with a UK Government lab and Hamburg University, HYFLAM is looking at a range of skilled tasks and investigating whether a robotic hand can perform them, and how well it performs them when working with software like that developed in HANDLE. This could lead to a new generation of robotic systems for hazardous lab work.