iCub3 has learned to feel touch and heat

In its first four years of existence iCub3, the sophisticated avatar robot created by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), has learned to perceive physical reality such as touch, the weight of objects and heat, and to move in environments hundreds of kilometres away. The results are published in Science Robotics, and work is now underway to make the avatar increasingly autonomous.

"We wanted to bring together in a single article the innovations implemented on iCub3 over the past four years and the demonstrations conducted outside the laboratories that illustrate its capabilities in outdoor environments," said Daniele Pucci, head of IIT's Artificial Intelligence and Mechanics laboratory, who coordinated the work together with Stefano Dafarra.

iCub3 is an evolution of the humanoid robot iCub, created at the IIT some 20 years ago, and was developed in cooperation with the National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work. In recent years it has shown increasing capabilities as an avatar, namely as a robot that is guided from remote by a human operator. It made its debut in 2021 at the Venice Biennale, where it was controlled from a distance of 300 kilometres, transmitting every command from the operator in real time.

Today, "iCub3 is also able to transmit to the remote operator the feeling of the weight of the object through vibrations, the roughness of a surface on its gloves, information such as the real distance of an object in the visors", said Dafarra. The scientist added that soon the avatar will also be able to transmit temperature.