Monica Malvezzi
Papers
91
Total Citations
2,928
H-Index
29
About
Monica Malvezzi is a prominent robotics researcher whose work spans haptics, robotic grasping, and human augmentation technologies. Based at the University of Siena, she has made transformative contributions to wearable haptic devices, hand synergies, and supernumerary robotic limbs, establishing herself as a leading voice in human-robot interaction. Her most celebrated work — a 3-DoF wearable fingertip device for cutaneous force feedback (286 citations) — helped pioneer the field of wearable haptics beyond simple vibrotactile stimulation, demonstrating that rich tactile information could be delivered without sacrificing user comfort. Complementing this, her research on cutaneous haptic feedback for teleoperation (145 citations) showed how ungrounded tactile cues can maintain system stability while preserving operator awareness — a critical advance for safe robotic surgery and remote manipulation. Malvezzi has equally shaped our understanding of robotic hand control, exploring how biological hand synergies can inform underactuated robotic grasping and developing SynGrasp, a widely adopted MATLAB toolbox (91 citations) for grasp analysis. Her visionary work on supernumerary robotic limbs and the "Sixth-Finger" concept (102 and 110 citations respectively) reframes prosthetics not as replacements but as genuine human capability enhancers — a paradigm shift with profound rehabilitation and industrial implications.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2On the role of hand synergies in the optimal choice of grasping forces152 citations · 2011
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- 5The Sixth-Finger: A modular extra-finger to enhance human hand capabilities110 citations · 2014
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- 9SynGrasp: A MATLAB Toolbox for Underactuated and Compliant Hands91 citations · 2015
- 10