AlterEgo exploits soft robotics to create effective, versatile, and intuitive avatars for the real-world, so that even the naivest operator can use it to experience a remote environment.

Our ambition is to create a platform that can remotely share the physical and social interaction skills of a human being. Leveraging the scientific and technological background of our group, we are creating a real-world effective avatar robot that can perform complex bimanual manipulation tasks and share the social communication modalities of humans, such as posture, gestures, gaze direction, and facial expressions. Using feedback collected from naïve people operating the avatar, we developed an intuitive directly experienced by the pilot, and natural and unobtrusive input interfaces for controlling the robotic avatar.

The Avatar

AlterEgo is a collaborative, modular lightweight robot with a humanoid upper body and a wheel-based mobile platform, designed for safe and effective interaction. It has 6-DoF robotic arms and soft hands. These have anthropomorphic shape and kinematics and feature synergetic nature-inspired motions to yield intuitive and proficient operation. Thanks to its elasticity, AlterEgo adapts both to heavy duties and delicate tasks. The avatar stands on 2 wheels, as an inverted pendulum: this minimizes its footprint and yields agile navigation in narrow spaces. AlterEgo is equipped with a stereoscopic vision system and a multidirectional microphone array and speaker system to enable bidirectional communication and situational awareness. An active robotic neck supports the avatar’s head following the pilot’s head. The hands integrate IMUs to measure the hand configuration and dynamic interaction to render it to the pilot through haptic interfaces and augmented reality.

Real World Applications

AlterEgo can closely replicate the movements and dynamics of the operator. This endows the robot with the human-like capability of regulating the interaction with the environment. It can effectively replace human presence in several situations, including operation in dangerous or hazardous environments (e.g. nuclear waste decommissioning), disaster response (e.g. nuclear disaster, earthquake, floods), healthcare and remote caregiving (e.g. nursing, elderly assistance, family care), and expert technical interventions (e.g. industrial maintenance).

Team Composition of the ANA AVATAR XPRIZE

The team is a joint venture among two research institutions: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and University of Pisa. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia contributes its longstanding experience in soft robotics, humanoid design and control, manipulation, teleoperation, and shared-autonomy control. University of Pisa brings long standing experience in wearable technologies and sensory feedback techniques. The team is led by Manuel G. Catalano, PhD, researcher in the IIT SoftBots research Line, and counts 10 Engineers, 5 PhD Students and 5 Senior Researchers, from IIT SoftBots, IIT HRI, IIT HHCM and University of Pisa’s Robotics Research Center “E. Piaggio”