Caption: Ashwathi Menon, co-captain of UMBC’s Indian fusion dance team, helps demo some of the technology in the lab. Here, she demonstrates the Katakamukha mudra as a robotic hand mimics her gesture. Parthan Olikkal, a graduate student working on the project, is in the background. Credit: Brad Ziegler/UMBC
Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have extracted the building blocks of precise hand gestures used in the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam—and found a richer ‘alphabet’ of movement compared to natural grasps. The work could improve how we teach hand movements to robots and offer humans better tools for physical therapy. The work was published online Nov. 24 [2025] in the journal Scientific Reports.
Ramana Vinjamuri, a professor at UMBC and lead researcher on the work, has focused his lab on understanding how the brain controls complex hand movements. More than a decade ago, he and his research partners began searching for and cataloguing the building blocks of hand motions, drawing on a concept called kinematic synergies, in which the brain simultaneously coordinates multiple joint movements to simplify complex motions. The concept can be used to deconstruct a dazzling diversity of movements into a limited number of fundamental units, similar to how the hundreds of thousands of different words in the English language can be broken down into only 26 letters.
Further inspiration struck when Vinjamuri attended a 2023 scientific conference on the brain, hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi in the serene foothills of the Himalayas. While brainstorming ideas for a session of the conference focused on ways that ancient Indian traditions might be applied to modern problems, Vinjamuri conceived a novel approach to deriving these building blocks—from the wide variety of precise hand gestures, called mudras, used in Indian classical dance to drive the storytelling element of the art form.
“We noticed dancers tend to age super gracefully: They remain flexible and agile because they have been training,” says Vinjamuri. “That was a huge inspiration for us when we started looking for richer alphabets of movement. With dance, we are looking not just at healthy movement, but super healthy. And so the question became, could we find a ‘superhuman’ alphabet from the dance gestures?”
Natural versus structured movements
As part of the newly published research, Vinjamuri and his students started by analyzing a data set of 30 natural hand grasps, used for picking up objects ranging in size from large water bottles to tiny beads. They found six synergies, akin to an alphabet of six letters, that when combined could account for nearly 99 percent of the variations in movements represented in the full data set.
Using the same techniques, the research team also analyzed 30 single-hand mudras. They found six synergies that could account for around 94 percent of the mudras’ variations.
Crucially, the team then tested how well the six natural grasp-derived synergies could combine to construct unrelated hand motions—in this case 15 letters of the American Sign Language alphabet—compared to the mudras-derived synergies. The mudra-derived synergies significantly outperformed the natural hand grasp synergies on that task.
“When we started this type of research more than 15 years ago, we wondered: Can we find a golden alphabet that can be used to reconstruct anything?” says Vinjamuri. “Now I highly doubt that there is such a thing. But the mudras-derived alphabet is definitely better than the natural grasp alphabet because there is more dexterity and more flexibility.”
Ultimately, Vinjamuri envisions coming up with libraries of task-specific alphabets that can be deployed depending on the needs, be it completing everyday household chores such as cooking or folding laundry, or something more complicated and precise, such as playing an instrument.
Robotic helping hands
The team is currently developing techniques to “teach” robotic hands the alphabets of movements and how to combine them to make new hand gestures. The approach marks a departure from standard techniques of teaching robots to mimic hand gestures, and toward a method rooted in our understanding of how the human body and brain work.
The researchers are testing the techniques on a stand-alone robotic hand and a humanoid robot, each of which operates in a different way and requires a unique approach to translating the mathematical representations of synergies into physical movements.
The team has also made great strides developing cost-effective and pragmatic methods of testing and implementing their ideas. They use a simple camera and software system to recognize, record, and analyze movements, an important contribution to ultimately making cost-effective technologies that people could use in their homes, such as a virtual system to coach people through physical therapy sessions, says Vinjamuri.
“Once I learned about synergies, I became so curious to see if we could use them to make a robotic hand respond and perform the same way as a human hand,” says Parthan Olikkal, a longtime member of Vinjamuri’s lab who is currently working toward his Ph.D in computer science. “Adding my own work to the research efforts, and seeing the results has been gratifying.”
Catherine Meyers’s December 15, 2025 article for the UMBC magazine provides a lot more detail along with embedded images,
Fossil records suggest that between four and six million years ago, the hominin ancestors of modern humans first stood up and walked on two legs—thus freeing their hands. Those hands went on to craft humanity’s story arc: cradling babies, carrying food, fashioning and wielding weapons, carving the woodblocks used to print the first paper books, running over the keys of a piano in a Rachmaninoff concerto, and even planting a flag on the surface of the moon.
“Hands are incredibly important to humans,” says Ramana Vinjamuri, an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering whose work has focused on understanding how the brain controls complex hand movements.
Vinjamuri personally witnessed the debilitating impact of loss of hand movement when his mother suffered a stroke in 2014. “The very hand that taught me how to draw, how to write—I saw that hand irrevocably paralyzed. It was really hard for the family.”
The experience motivated Vinjamuri to work on technologies that could help people regain lost motor functions or serve as robotic replacements for injured body parts. As part of the research, the team began searching for and cataloging the building blocks of hand motions. Further inspiration struck when Vinjamuri attended a scientific conference on the brain, hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi in the serene foothills of the Himalayas. While brainstorming ideas for a session of the conference focused on ways that ancient Indian traditions might be applied to modern problems, Vinjamuri conceived a novel approach to deriving these building blocks—from the structured hand gestures of Indian classical dance.
A Complex and Versatile Instrument
Take a moment to consider your hands. Including the wrist, each hand has 27 joints. Some of those joints, such as the carpometacarpal joint at the base of the thumb, can move in multiple ways, such as rotating, bending, and moving toward or away from the center of the palm. The full hand encompasses billions of possible unique combinations of movements.
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Dance-Derived Alphabets of Movement
Ashwathi Menon demonstrates mudras, which are copied by an Inspire robotic hand. From top to bottom the mudras are: Ardhachandra, meaning “half moon;” Chandrakala, meaning “crescent moon;” and Tripataka, meaning “three parts of the flag.” The mudras can demonstrate various elements of a story, including weapons, trees, flowers, or concepts such as balance, unity, and beauty.. Courtesy: UMBC
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Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Reconstructing hand gestures with synergies extracted from dance movements by Parthan Olikkal, Chris Dollo, Akshara Ajendla, Ann Sofie Clemmensen & Ramana Vinjamuri. Scientific Reports volume 15, Article number: 41670 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-25563-7 Published: 24 November 2025 Version of record: 24 November 2025
I received notice of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology’s newest deal with the US National Science Foundation in an August 31, 2015 email University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) news release,
The Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, a multi-institutional research center based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has inked a new contract with the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will provide nearly $20 million in support over the next five years.
Directed by UW-Madison chemistry Professor Robert Hamers, the center focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which nanoparticles interact with biological systems.
Nanotechnology involves the use of materials at the smallest scale, including the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules. Products that use nanoscale materials range from beer bottles and car wax to solar cells and electric and hybrid car batteries. If you read your books on a Kindle, a semiconducting material manufactured at the nanoscale underpins the high-resolution screen.
While there are already hundreds of products that use nanomaterials in various ways, much remains unknown about how these modern materials and the tiny particles they are composed of interact with the environment and living things.
“The purpose of the center is to explore how we can make sure these nanotechnologies come to fruition with little or no environmental impact,” explains Hamers. “We’re looking at nanoparticles in emerging technologies.”
In addition to UW-Madison, scientists from UW-Milwaukee, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois, Northwestern University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been involved in the center’s first phase of research. Joining the center for the next five-year phase are Tuskegee University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Iowa, Augsburg College, Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
At UW-Madison, Hamers leads efforts in synthesis and molecular characterization of nanomaterials. soil science Professor Joel Pedersen and chemistry Professor Qiang Cui lead groups exploring the biological and computational aspects of how nanomaterials affect life.
Much remains to be learned about how nanoparticles affect the environment and the multitude of organisms – from bacteria to plants, animals and people – that may be exposed to them.
“Some of the big questions we’re asking are: How is this going to impact bacteria and other organisms in the environment? What do these particles do? How do they interact with organisms?” says Hamers.
For instance, bacteria, the vast majority of which are beneficial or benign organisms, tend to be “sticky” and nanoparticles might cling to the microorganisms and have unintended biological effects.
“There are many different mechanisms by which these particles can do things,” Hamers adds. “The challenge is we don’t know what these nanoparticles do if they’re released into the environment.”
To get at the challenge, Hamers and his UW-Madison colleagues are drilling down to investigate the molecular-level chemical and physical principles that dictate how nanoparticles interact with living things.
Pedersen’s group, for example, is studying the complexities of how nanoparticles interact with cells and, in particular, their surface membranes.
“To enter a cell, a nanoparticle has to interact with a membrane,” notes Pedersen. “The simplest thing that can happen is the particle sticks to the cell. But it might cause toxicity or make a hole in the membrane.”
Pedersen’s group can make model cell membranes in the lab using the same lipids and proteins that are the building blocks of nature’s cells. By exposing the lab-made membranes to nanomaterials now used commercially, Pedersen and his colleagues can see how the membrane-particle interaction unfolds at the molecular level – the scale necessary to begin to understand the biological effects of the particles.
Such studies, Hamers argues, promise a science-based understanding that can help ensure the technology leaves a minimal environmental footprint by identifying issues before they manifest themselves in the manufacturing, use or recycling of products that contain nanotechnology-inspired materials.
To help fulfill that part of the mission, the center has established working relationships with several companies to conduct research on materials in the very early stages of development.
“We’re taking a look-ahead view. We’re trying to get into the technological design cycle,” Hamers says. “The idea is to use scientific understanding to develop a predictive ability to guide technology and guide people who are designing and using these materials.”
What with this initiative and the LCnano Network at Arizona State University (my April 8, 2014 posting; scroll down about 50% of the way), it seems that environmental and health and safety studies of nanomaterials are kicking into a higher gear as commercialization efforts intensify.
