The development of robotic cognition and the advancement of understanding of human cognition form two of the current greatest challenges in robotics and neuroscience, respectively. The RobotCub project aims to develop an embodied robotic child (iCub) with the physical (height 90 cm and mass less than 23 kg) and ultimately cognitive abilities of a 2.5-year-old human child. The iCub will be a freely available open system which can be used by scientists in all cognate disciplines from developmental psychology to epigenetic robotics to enhance understanding of cognitive systems through the study of cognitive development. The iCub will be open both in software, but more importantly in all aspects of the hardware and mechanical design. In this paper the design of the mechanisms and structures forming the basic 'body' of the iCub are described. The papers considers kinematic structures dynamic design criteria, actuator specification and selection, and detailed mechanical and electronic design. The paper concludes with tests of the performance of sample joints, and comparison of these results with the design requirements and simulation projects.

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This article describes the hardware design of the iCub humanoid robot. The iCub is an opensource humanoid robotic platform designed explicitly to support research in embodied cognition. This paper covers the mechanical and electronic design of the¯rst release of the robot. A series upgrades developed for the second version of the robot (iCub2), which are aimed at the improvement of the mechanical and sensing performance, are also described.

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-This paper presents first results in developing an anthropomorphic dextrous hand for a 2-years-old Humanoid. As this robot is aimed to be a physical platform for cognition, the number of degrees of freedom of the upper part of the body has been maximized. The robotic hand has 20 DoFs and 9 motors to accomplish optimal grasping and manipulation. Based on the manipulation tasks required in the project and on the human hand functional anatomy, we decided a mixed implementation of cable directed driven and underactuated joints, locating most of the motors in the upper limb. The abduction/adduction of the fingers and the hollowing of the palm have been implemented and coupled together, driven by a single actuator. The first prototype has been developed; it includes the hand mechanism, the actuators and a proprioceptive sensory system for the joint positioning and the grasping force control. The sensor for cable tension and the design of the actuation units to be placed in the arm are described in detail.