Dear Colleagues,

Manipulation and physical interaction with an unstructured environment are key challenges in current robotics. Robots are intelligent machines that are able to physically interact with the environment, objects and humans. When a robot is endowed with suitable perception and control systems, its intelligence is embodied as the robot quickly reacts to external stimuli coming from sensors, e.g., force, proximity and visual data. Manipulation is a very special interaction modality that includes grasping and the in-hand manipulation of objects. If a safe and firm grasp is a difficult task in an unstructured environment, in-hand manipulation is a true challenge.

When robots physically interact with humans by sharing their workspaces, safety is a key aspect. In such a scenario, perception and control need to satisfy additional constraints—performing the task is not enough; therefore, awareness of the human is of paramount importance.

This Special Issue invites papers on modern robot control, e.g., force/tactile control, friction modeling, object detection, obstacle avoidance, machine learning, performance measures, human–robot safe interaction, and grasping of fragile or deformable objects. The Special Issue will cover the scientific and technological advancements in this field, which could improve many social aspects, especially outside strongly structured factories, such as healthcare, domestic robotics, in-store logistics and human–robot collaboration in general.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Deep learning in grasping and manipulation;
• Mobile manipulation;
• Object detection, segmentation and categorization;
• Reactive and sensor-based planning;
• Human factors and human-in-the-loop;
• Physical human–robot interaction;
• Dexterous manipulation;
• Dual arm manipulation;
• Grippers and other end effectors;
• Domestic robots;
• Force and tactile sensing;
• Force control;
• Collision avoidance.

We look forward to receiving your submissions for this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Ciro Natale
Dr. Marco Costanzo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• physical human–robot interaction
• grasping
• in-hand manipulation
• contact modeling
• perception for grasping and manipulation
• safety
• reactive control
• robot control