Grasping and Manipulation in Humanoid Robotics Cecilia Laschi 1,2 , Paolo Dario 1,2 , Maria Chiara Carrozza 1,2 , Eugenio Guglielmelli 1,2 , Giancarlo Teti 1,2 , Davide Taddeucci 1 , Fabio Leoni 1 , Bruno Massa 1,2 , Massimiliano Zecca 1,2 , Roberto Lazzarini 1,2 1 Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna via Carducci 40, 56127 Pisa, Italy dario@arts.sssup.it 2 Centro INAIL RTR via Vetraia 7, 55049 Viareggio (LU), Italy inail_rtr@arts.sssup.it Abstract. Humanoid robotics is attracting the interest of many research groups world-wide. In particular, developing humanoids requires the implementation of manipulation capabilities, which is still a most complex problem in robotics. This paper presents an overview of current activities in the development of humanoid robots, with special focus on manipulation. Then we discuss our current approach to the design and development of anthropomorphic sensorized hand and of anthropomorphic control and sensory-motor coordination schemes. Current achievements in the development of a robotic human hand prosthesis are described, together with preliminary experimental results, as well as in the implementation of biologically-inspired schemes for control and sensory-motor co-ordination in manipulation, derived from models of well-identified human brain areas. 1 Introduction Today Humanoid Robotics is the ‘Grand Challenge’ for robotics research. Such challenge stands as the natural evolution of advanced robotics but also represents the ancient dream of humans to replicate themselves. Thus, from one side humanoid robotics responds to the need for useful machines helping humans in a variety of activities, which has evolved from industrial to service robotics [1] and then to personal robotics [2]. On the other, it represents the 3 rd Millennium attempt to imitate nature and to replicate humans, as the highest paradigms of virtuosity, which in the past has been pursued since ancient time by building “automata” [3]. Nowadays, the field of humanoid robotics, is attracting the interest of many research groups worldwide. Important efforts have been devoted to the objective of developing humanoids and impressive results have been achieved, from the technological point of view, especially for the problem of biped walking. Manipulation is an essential capability of humanoid robots. Much work has been devoted to investigate manipulation in the last decades.