Design and development of a neurorobotic human-like 'guinea pig'

Robotics technology is mature enough to provide helpful tools in the study of biological systems. The recent advances of humanoid robotics led to achievements in the development of human-like body parts and whole bodies, as well as of perceptual systems and schemes for behavior planning and learning. For this reason, a step further can be envisaged in the application of human-like robots as 'guinea pigs' for neuroscientific studies of Man. Aiming at combining humanoid robotics and neurosciences, this is a very promising research area which can he referred to as "neurorobotics". This paper presents a human-like robotic manipulation platform for implementing neuro-physiological models of sensory-motor coordination in human grasping. The system is composed of sensors and actuators replicating some level of anthropomorphism, in the physical structure and/or in the functionality. For this reason, their specifications are defined together with neurophysiologists. Software modules implement human-like basic mechanisms of perception and learning, on which more complex architectures are developed. The system is integrated so as to be as modular as possible and to be rearranged for validating different solutions. The performance of the system in grasping is evaluated by techniques and tools derived from functional evaluation of humans in rehabilitation.