A professor from the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the Cullen College of Engineering is part of a collaboration between researchers at three universities to redesign robotic hands to increase their dexterity.
At Cullen, Alamgir Karim is the Dow Chair and Welch Foundation Professor, as well as the director of the International Polymer & Soft Matter Center (IPSMC) and the director of the Materials Engineering Program. He is also a co-PI for the proposed research, “Bio-Inspired Design of Robot Hands for Use-Driven Dexterity.”
According to the project's abstract, its goal is to “create a transformative, bio-inspired re-design of the robotic hand. A new approach to robot hand design can bring results with national impact.” An estimated 400,000 Americans are living with some form of upper limb loss, and the researchers aim to redesign the robot hand for greater functional dexterity.
The total grant amount is $650,000. The principal investigator is Nancy Pollard, a professor in the Robotics Institute and the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. An additional co-PI is Joohyung Kim, an associate professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Grainger College of Engineering.
The research is estimated to run through December 2024. Funding is provided via the NSF's Convergence Accelerator Track M, which addresses national-scale societal challenges through use-inspired convergence research. About $10 million in funding was provided for 15 different projects by the NSF in February. For more information on these other projects, visit the NSF News website.