Heriot-Watt University

This equipment enables force and torque sensing in order for robot manipulators to interact either with humans or with the physical environment. In ECR, we are developing physically interactive assistant robots to help people with finely skilled manipulations. The robotic assistants are usually admittance controlled, which means that the force/torque sensor attached to the end-effector captures the force/torque impact on the robot and then the end-point position/orientation is updated according to this force/torque reading.

This system is used for recording Electromyography signals from human muscles. In ECR, we are interested in understanding the human body activity needed to generate the fine manipulations for highly skilled and professional tasks that are typical in minimally invasive surgical operations in medicine, and manual welding in industrial manufacturing. The EMG measurement system enables us to record and analyse the arm muscle activity of novice versus professional subjects, and that of trainee subjects, throughout the course of training.

This system is used for imaging cortical brain activity with Near-Infrared Spectroscopy. In ECR, we are interested in understanding the human body activity to generate the fine manipulations for highly skill requiring and professional tasks, typical in minimally invasive surgery operations in medicine and manual welding in industrial manufacturing. The OxyMon NIRS system enables us to record and analyse the brain activity of novice versus professional subjects and that of trainee subjects throughout the course of training.

8 many core nodes w/ GPGPU + 4 Transtec servers w/ Xeon Phi

The iCub head has 6 degrees of freedom and sports two cameras (Dragonfly2), two microphones (with special pinnae), gyros and accelerometers (Mtx). It also mounts a PC104 dual core machine with enough ports to control the entire robot, read data and send them out via a Gbit/s Ethernet port.