The winning “ReTeLINK” project
An Italian research team managed to convince the international jury, leave 20 competitors in its wake and advance important innovations in the field of human-robot collaboration. Researchers from the Biorobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna took home the KUKA Innovation Award 2015 with their application ReTeLINK (Reciprocal Teleoperation of the LBR iiwa and an Interactive Exoskeleton).
The “ReTeLINK” is an application which involves establishing a data link between two compliant robot arms: the KUKA LBR iiwa robot arm and a newly developed upper-limb exoskeleton (shoulder-elbow). With the application, the human moves the lightweight robot like his own arm, using the sensorized exoskeleton capable of detecting the shoulder and elbow joint angles. The exoskeleton’s motors provide force feedback of the interaction of the LBR iiwa with its environment. This can be applied to applications in telepresence and rehabilitation treatment.