iCub 3, the robot avatar for the real world is Italian: you can control it with a suit from miles away

More and more companies in the technology sector (and not only that) are studying the metaverse, with the desire to become part of it. But there are also those who take inspiration from the metaverse to intervene on reality.

This is the case of a research group of the IIT-Italian Institute of Technology. Thanks to which a new version of the humanoid robot iCub, which was called iCub 3, can become our physical avatar. That is, it will be able to move not in the virtual world of the metaverse, but to mimic our movements and our actions in the dear, old world of three-dimensionality.

Let’s find out more about the project.

The iCub 3 project

The iCub 3 project was carried out by a team of researchers from the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence laboratory. And it was coordinated by Daniele Pucci of the Italian Institute of Technology-IIT.

The team first tested the advanced tele-existence system on a new version of the iCub robot, called iCub 3.

iCub was put to the test as a physical avatar of a human. The operators tested the virtual remote control of his ability to move in space, manipulate objects, perceive stimuli. And those of interacting verbally and physically with people and the environment.

The experiment

Thanks to the integration of different technologies and the development of specific software, the research team remotely guided iCub 3 about 300 kilometers away. The researchers were in fact in the laboratories of the ITT in Genoa, and the humanoid robot inside the Italian Pavilion at the seventeenth International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

The experiment was carried out in collaboration with the Italian Pavilion “Resilient Communities”. It is promoted by the General Direction of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and curated by the Architect Alessandro Melis.

During the iCub 3 experiment he visited the spaces and admired the works of the Italian Pavilion in Venice, reproducing the commands that the operator gave him from Genoa. Operator who in this way was transported in an immersive way to another reality without moving from the laboratory.

This tele-existence, made using a common optical fiber, makes iCub 3 move with a communication delay of just 25 milliseconds.

The experiment in detail

The teleoperator wore a sensorized suit designed and built by IIT as part of the European AnDy project and applied with INAIL as part of the ergoCub project. The suit, called iFeel, has two goals. It tracks the operator’s body movement to transmit it to the robot, and provides haptic feedback (tactile sensations) to the operator wearing it, so that he can sense when and where the robot is touched.

The teleoperator at the IIT headquarters in Genoa walks on site within a virtual reality platform. Which detects the direction and speed of the walk and allows him to freely move the lower part (legs and feet) and upper body (arms and hands).

The research group has also developed the algorithms that allow the integration of different already existing technologies. The operator wears a visor that tracks his facial expressions and head movements which are transferred to the avatar and reproduced with a high level of accuracy.

If the operator closes his eyes or moves his eyebrows, the robot replicates his actions by making LEDs appear that simulate the different facial expressions. The eyes of iCub 3 are cameras that have acquired images in Venice and then transferred to the operator’s viewer in Genoa. Who saw and heard what he saw and heard the robot.

iCub 3 is able to relate verbally, thanks to systems that record the operator’s voice and transmit it to the avatar.

Possible uses of physical avatars

The success of the tele-existence experiment conducted in Venice concretizes the strategy of the team coordinated by Daniele Pucci. Whose goal is to develop humanoid robots in the future that can act as avatars of humans in dangerous contexts. Such as the carry out actions in places potentially at risk for human health or inaccessible. Other important functions of physical avatars are that of giving jobs or other opportunities to people with disabilitiesand propose a new model for the use of our cultural capital.

The words of the project coordinator

Daniele Pucci, project coordinator, said: “We want to create robotic avatars for humans using humanoid robots to foster interaction with the real world remotely..

We use metaverse access-like methods to remotely access a physical and non-digital world, and we believe this direction of research has enormous potential. On the one hand, emergencies such as the recent pandemic teach us that advanced telepresence systems can become necessary in a short time. And they can make a difference in various fields, such as healthcare and logistics. On the other hand, we imagine that humanoid avatars will be able to allow people with disabilities to work and perform actions in the real world through a robotic body with the ultimate aim of countering the marginalization of people with severe disabilities confined to their homes “.