Researchers - Antonio Bicchi, Manuel Catalano, Nikos Tsagarakis, Arash Ajoudani

Responsibles - Francesca Negrello, Stefano Ierace

Kilometro Rosso Bergamo

The JOiiNT LAB is a joint laboratory resulting from the partnership with some of the main innovation players in Bergamo, a highly industrial and technological province. The JOiiNT LAB is promoted by Intellimech, a consortium of companies aiming at fostering technology transfer and creating a synergy between the world of research and industrial needs, Confindustria Bergamo, a free, non-profit association of companies that plays a representative role of the industrial and tertiary enterprises of Bergamo and its province, Kilometro Rosso Innovation District, one of the places with the highest density of innovation at European level and the University of Bergamo.

The JOIINT LAB was launched in 2020 to strengthen the IIT technology transfer mission, and create a synergy between research and industrial needs.

Primary objectives of the JOiiNT LAB are:

• Technology Transfer - identify and develop the most modern robotic technologies, which will be applied and tested in environments and applications relevant for the technical and industrial production world.
• Advanced Training - foster the transfer of IIT's scientific and technological know-how for the training of high-level professional figures with advanced technical-scientific skills.
• Promote excellent Science and Technology - promote the hi-tech quality of the Italian industry and its diffusion in the world.

The main activities of the JOiiNT LAB are in the field of mechatronics, collaborative robotics, and wearable and immersive telepresence systems. The validity of the developed technologies will be demonstrated in environments relevant to industry, such as:

• Flexible assembly and manipulation work centers
• Telepresence for inspection and maintenance
• Virtual exoskeletons for remote manipulation
• Artificial intelligence for machine vision and inspection

The enabling technologies representing the pillars of the JOiiNT LAB know-how are:

• Soft Robotics: the traditional rigid technologies used in industrial robots will be replaced by soft structural and actuation elements, to reduce the force peaks generated by contact uncertainties and ensure a safe interaction with humans.
• Immersive and augmented telepresence: thanks to modern virtual and augmented reality technologies, it is possible to imagine new application scenarios, such as the advanced collaboration between human operators and robots, or the intervention in dangerous or remote scenarios, where human access must be limited.
• Wearable Human Robot Interfaces: the intuitiveness and comfort of the user interface strongly affect the acceptability of the robotic technology. Wearable haptic feedback devices are a good opportunity to get engaging, comfortable, natural, and stable feedback when performing remote activities.
• Artificial Intelligence for la Machine Vision: the ability to interpret the operating context, and to recognize objects and their properties to support operator decisions, or other automatic systems in the production process, is a cross-cutting issue in many productive areas/sectors.

Internal members - Giorgio Metta, Andrea Pagnin, Matteo Bonfanti, Antonio Bicchi

External members - Gianluigi Viscardi (Intellimech), Giulio Guadalupi (Confindustria-Bergamo), Salvatore Majorana (Kilometro Rosso), Giancarlo Maccarini (UniBg)