Prof. Monica Malvezzi (Univ Siena and IIT, Italy) will give a talk on June 26 at 14:00 in Salle Minquiers.
Title: Design and control of wearable robots for haptics and human augmentation
Abstract: I will present the main research activities carried out at the SIRSLab of Siena University on the design and application of wearable robots. In particular, I will focus on two main applications. The first one is for haptics: wearable haptic devices do not present workspace limitations, are not limited to human hand and, decoupling kinesthetic and cutaneous part of haptic perception, can be used to solve stability issues in robotic teleoperation tasks. I will summarize the main design criteria we adopted to develop different type of wearable haptic devices and their main application. The second application is relative to wearable robots for human augmentation. I will introduce the application of wearable extra fingers as compensation tools for people who could not use their hands (e.g. stroke patients). I will describe how we could solve design problems as robustness, adaptability, limited weight, trough underactuation and optimization of device mechanical properties.
Bio sketch: Monica Malvezzi is Assistant Professor of Mechanics and Mechanism Theory at the Dept. of Information Engineering and Mathematics of the University of Siena. Since 2015 she has been also visiting scientist at the Dept. of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy. From 2003 to 2007 she was a researcher at the Energy Engineering Department of the University of Firenze. She received the Laurea degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florence in 1999 and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mechanics from the University of Bologna in 2003. Her main research interests are in control of mechanical systems, robotics, vehicle localization, multibody dynamics, haptics, grasping and dexterous manipulation.
