Humanware srl has been established in 1996 by a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers with long experience in Robotics and Virtual Reality. Humanware is a consulting company whose main activities are related to Mechatronics, Robotics, Computer Science and Computer Graphics. The company also develops devices and software applications for the Biomedical market and it is involved in multimedia application development.

Another strategic activity of Humanware consists in developing advanced man-machine interfaces (hardware and software). In fact, the company’s business area is in the design, development, prototyping and marketing of mechatronic innovative man-machine interfaces and systems that allow the user to interact, in real time, both with virtual worlds – simulated on the computer – and with real worlds, but in a remote location. Humanware develops complete software tools for Virtual Reality, Multimedia and systems for training, above all for the Medical field. By using these technologies, the operator can actively and naturally interact with a computer generated virtual or teleoperated environment, by using her/his own senses in an immersive way.

Humanware facilities are based in Pisa, Tuscany, Italy. Since 2007 Humanware has been operating in accordance with ISO 9001 and SA 8000 standards.

What motivates us

Due to the previous experience in robotic design and in the field of Virtual Reality, Humanware together with the Sucola Superiore Sant’Anna, decided to stress the issue of human-robot cooperation as proposed in ECHORD call. The goal was to profit by the knowledge of previous project and to exploit the Humanware’s devices in order to extend the knowledge

• in the field of control engineering
• in the specific task of co-manipulation
• in the domain of safety in automation.

Humanware aims to identify new safety standard in safe robot design; both with new control strategies and with new requirement definitions during the design phase. The achievement of a safe and compliant interaction strategy between the robot and the human operator can allow the company to address the industrial automation market with new and safe devices. Moreover the tracker and the dataglove provided for the experiment could be used as tools for further developments.