Supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) gained increasing interest in the last years for their applicability as healthcare and assistive technologies. These devices can either support or augment human sensorimotor capabilities, allowing users to complete tasks that are more complex than those feasible for their natural limbs. However, for a successful coordination between natural and artificial limbs, intuitiveness of interaction and perception of autonomy are key enabling features, especially for people suffering from motor disorders and impairments. The development of suitable human-robot interfaces is thus fundamental to foster the adoption of SRLs. With this work, we describe how to control an extra degree of freedom by taking advantage of what we defined the Intrinsic Kinematic Null Space, i.e. the redundancy of the human kinematic chain involved in the ongoing task. Obtained results demonstrated that the proposed control strategy is effective for performing complex tasks with a supernumerary robotic finger, and that practice improves users' control ability.
@article{arxiv.2012.03600,
title = {Exploiting Intrinsic Kinematic Null Space for Supernumerary Robotic Limbs Control},
author = {Tommaso Lisini Baldi and Nicole D'Aurizio and Sergio Gurgone and Daniele Borzelli and Andrea D'Avella and Domenico Prattichizzo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.03600},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication