Editorial of Human-like Robotic Hands for Biomedical Applications and Beyond Provisionally Accepted

Emanuele Lindo Secco^1* Yohan Noh²

• ¹Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom
• ²Brunel University London, United Kingdom

Robotic hands integrating tactile or force/torque sensors have been utilised in assisting robots and amputees in closely interacting with environments and objects. For example, robotic hands have been employed to grasp objects stably and manipulate them dexterously without dropping them and damaging them as if people can. Robotic hands have been used for robots and amputees to express their gestures to people for better communication, as well as robotic hands fused with tactile or force/torque sensors can make the impossible possible for amputees to play musical instruments such as a piano, a guitar, etc as if people play them while controlling delicate finger forces. These are common daily actions that we sometimes take for granted, but they are not. In many situations, these interactions are no longer achievable.With this topic, we have attempted to collect current contributions on the design and integration of novel solutions for the advancement of robotic and prosthetic hands and sensing technology measurable for force, distance, force, etc., which is integrated into the hands.In this collection you will find the result of contributions from 27 authors and 14 reviewers and editors from 11 countries (Australia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherland Here is a brief summary of the main contributions with a link to the details of each work: GP Kontoudis et al presented An Adaptive Actuation Mechanism for Anthropomorphic Robot Hands where they propose a novel tendon-driven actuation mechanism for anthropomorphic robotic hands. W Friedl and MA Roa reported a compliant low-cost antagonist servo hand in CLASH-A Compliant Sensorized Hand for Handling Delicate Objects which is an interesting design providing variable stiffness to the device when grasping daily life objects. C Bosio and colleagues focused on the Scalable Fabrication and Actuation of a Human Inspired Hand Through 3D Printed Flexures and Combinatorial Actuation: they design fingers which can be manufactured as a single piece which are also inherently compliant. M Lin et al looked at how rehabilitative treatment of the hand could be improved by means of soft exoskeleton combined with playing musical instruments. Details of their work are reported in the paper here: Feeling the beat: a smart hand exoskeleton for learning to play musical instruments. Finally, M Zandigohar and colleagues analyse Multimodal fusion of EMG and vision for human grasp intent inference in prosthetic hand control and consolidate evidences vs the importance of using muti sensorial channels in motor learning.In our view, such a variety of authors and contributions is a clear sign of the urgency and importance of this topic. We hope that this collection will trigger your interest and induce to contact us and these amazing authors in view of further collaborations and development on the topic.