Neurorobotics Lab

The Neurorobotics group at Newcastle University works at the intersection of robotics/mechatronics and neuroscience. On the one hand, it uses robotic and mechatronic technologies to study how the human brain plans, controls and executes movements, as well as how it acquires new motor skills, from the early stage of its development to its maturity. On the other hand, it aims to exploit the knowledge acquired from a healthy brain for a human-centered design of robotic and mechatronic systems, to better assess and intervene on movement-related brain pathologies, such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease. These research activities are strongly interdisciplinary and benefit from the opportunity to work with neuroscientists, clinical neurophysiologists and developmental psychologists. The group is led by Prof. Domenico Formica and has expertise in robotics for applications in neuroscience, control of physical human-robot interaction, and experimental motor neuroscience. On these themes prof. Formica is coordinating the EU project CONBOTS which aims at designing and testing a new class of robots, the CONBOTS, which physically couple people to facilitate the learning of complex sensorimotor tasks.