One important feature PAL Robotics had clear when designing TIAGo was its modularity and configurability. A proof of how modular TIAGo is, our mobile manipulator for research, is the integration of the Shadow Hand Extra Lite to our robot. That happened at the IROS 2015 Conference, held in Hamburg a month ago. The Shadow Hand Extra Lite was attached to TIAGo’s arm as an end-effector. That was possible thanks to the effective design of both robots to be adapted to any hardware: TIAGo is compatible with not only PAL Robotics’ end-effectors, but also with others, with its plug-and-play end-effector.

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TIAGo robot with Shadow Hand end-effector

TIAGo robot with the Shadow Hand at IROS 2015

The possibility of customizing a research platform is crucial for investigating. Frequently, robotic platforms’ capabilities limit the project and force researchers to modify it to adapt to the robot. This is a common problem in robotics, where there is still a long path to go in research. TIAGo adapts to the specific research needs, with many configurable features that can be modified, like the end-effector. TIAGo lets researchers focus on their purpose without worrying about the adaptability of the robot to what they want to do.