Project Grant FA23862314029

This three-year, $243,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program, will fund research to develop smart skins for robotic prosthetic hands. The grantee, Villanova University in Pennsylvania, will collaborate with researchers across the country to fundamentally understand adaptive tactile interactions between shape-morphing robotic skins and grasped objects. This will...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering (CFDA 47.041) EAGER grant to Northeastern University provides $229,680 from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2025 to evaluate the feasibility of a soft and compressible electronic skin (e-skin) device that integrates a touch sensor with a soft electromagnetic coil-based flexible actuator. The goal is to replicate natural skin characteristics, including receptors embedded in soft tissue tightly coupled with muscles, to enable...

The National Science Foundation awarded North Carolina State University $729,000 under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program to develop smart skins for robotic prosthetic hands. The three-year project grant, awarded on September 1, 2022 and set to conclude on August 31, 2025, will fund research to fundamentally understand adaptive tactile interactions between shape-morphing robotic skins and grasped objects. Researchers will pursue three thrusts: understanding contact...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program award to Purdue University supports research to develop high-performance tactile sensors that can detect various sizes of objects within microseconds, comparable to human skin. The $510,542 grant, awarded on November 1, 2023, will fund the manufacturing of these sensors using 3D printing and conformal polymer coating techniques. The research aims to create a new manufacturing capability for hierarchically architected structures with...

This $183,309 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to develop artificial touch sensations that feel natural and intuitive for users of bionic prosthetic limbs. The research project will explore novel biomimetic electrical stimulation algorithms to create sensory percepts that mimic the natural nerve signals in the skin, in order to enhance the functional performance and reduce the cognitive load of people using prosthetic arms. The...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant award of $275,000 to Irradiant Sensing Corporation aims to develop a novel tactile sensing technology with applications in robotics and biomedical instruments. The project will create a high-resolution, high-force-sensitivity tactile sensor that can enable robots and robotic tools to safely and precisely interact with their environment, including soft biological tissues. This...

This $549,195 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports the development of a minimally invasive, wireless implantable optical tactile sensor device. The device is designed to measure skin forces and restore the sense of touch for individuals with paralysis resulting from stroke or spinal cord injury. The project aims to create an implantable sensor that can bypass damaged nerves and communicate with the brain, using photoplethysmography...

This $272,617 National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) award to the University of Illinois supports fundamental research on high-dimensional proprioceptive and tactile sensing methods for soft robotic grippers. The project aims to develop a new framework, called DeepSORO, that uses embedded cameras and advanced deep learning models to provide real-time, high-resolution sensing and state estimation of the grippers' kinematics and dynamics. This research seeks to...

This $300,000 EAGER project grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will conduct basic scientific research toward a new wearable technology that can capture images through human skin using advanced diffractive optical networks. The research team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) aims to develop a lightweight, cost-effective, and wearable computational imager and sensor system that can enable applications such as...

This Project Grant award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of the Director under the Trans-NIH Research Support program (CFDA 93.310) provides $1,255,340 to the University of California, Berkeley to conduct research on how the brain processes sensory feedback to enable dexterous movement control. The key objective is to leverage simultaneous high-density electrophysiological recordings from the motor cortex, somatosensory cortex, and motor thalamus in non-human primates to...