Neuro-Robotic Touch Laboratory

The Neuro-Robotic Touch laboratory mainly targets the engineering of an artificial tactile sense in parallel to the investigation of human touch. We develop and integrate novel transducers, both synthetic and bio-hybrid. We implement neuromorphic systems, with natural spiking coding of tactile information. We analyse neural data to unveil the neuronal processes underlying the human sense of touch, and we implement behavioural protocols to characterize the perception of tactile features. This body of neuroscientific knowledge and the developed biorobotic technologies converge in a key application domain in upper limb neuroprosthetics, with complementary interests stemming towards safe human-machine co-work, tele-presence for medical robotics and hand-held consumer electronics.