Cyber-Prosthetics

Cyber-Prosthetics
29 september 2018
17.00 – 21.00
Universitary Campus Le Benedettine (Aula 75)

“Real progress is what puts technology in everyone’s hands”
[Henry Ford]

This famous phrase has accompanied us throughout the last century, giving rise to the technological revolution that has brought in our lives, cars, smartphones, computers, increasingly advanced appliances and at increasingly affordable costs. Transferring this concept also in the assisitive / rehabilitative field represents today one of the most important challenges for the world of scientific research. This point of view is even more sensitive if we think of devices such as upper limb prostheses. Devices that are not just tools of daily life, but, ideally, real extensions of the user’s body. All this motivates the need to realize not only new and better performing technological solutions, but also to make these solutions accessible and functional to real needs. To date, most prostheses of daily use – especially of the hand and upper limb – are either purely aesthetic and / or extremely simple, while the most advanced robotic devices are very expensive, fragile and not sufficiently intuitive for continuous and prolonged use. . These characteristics still represent a strong limit to their diffusion. The modern challenge of scientific research is therefore to develop systems that can be easy to use, robust, effective and not excessively expensive, while at the same time trying to push the technological limits further up to the possibility of recreating, and then try to “give back” , the sense of touch to users. In order to achieve these ambitious objectives, the modeling and understanding of the sensor-motor language of the human body and its correct translation into an artificial body represent the basis of study on which numerous research groups are focusing all over the world. In this workshop we will present the recent developments that have been made in this direction at the Piaggio Center of the University of Pisa, the Italian Institute of Technology, and the Sant’Anna High School, centers of international excellence in the field of scientific research on hands artificial. During the course of the program it will also be given the opportunity to “touch” these technologies, which we hope will soon improve people’s lives, becoming an integral part of their daily life.

Program