One of Harvard's most competitive scientific projects lies hidden away on the third floor of Cruft Hall, behind the Science Center, where few non-science concentrators ever venture.

In this out-of-the-way spot, the Harvard Robotics Laboratory--a team of professors, graduate students and undergraduates--races against similar teams across the world to make people out of computer chips and metal parts.

The approximately 30 researchers at the laboratory envision a future with robots acting as reliable errand-runners, able to change batteries in an orbiting satellite or drive to school and pick up the children.

But the visionary team works toward its goal one body part at a time. Right now the staff is concentrating its efforts on perfecting a computer that will imitate human hand-eye coordination. The robot's hand has two fingers and a thumb, each with its own motor, and fingertips that contain high-resolution tactile sensors. Lab experiments test the hand's ability in tasks like lifting and grasping objects.

"It's an obvious challenge if you set out to answer the question 'Can we build intelligent machines?' I think the next step might very well be to put together a mobile robot," said McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics Roger W. Brockett, who coordinates the lab.

A mobile robot is not quite within reach, however, Brockett estimates that it will take between two and 10 years to realize that goal. In the meantime, Harvard will try to complete its hand-eye project before its competitors. "Right now we have our hands full with the hand-eye machine," Brockett said.

The lab works on an annual budget of $750,000, about $250,000 of which goes to fund work on hand-eye coordination in computers. Currently the lab is in its third year of a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

And laboratories across the country are working quickly to perfect their own hand-eye machines.

"Multi-fingered hands are particularly competitive at the current time," said Shankar S. Sastry, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Berkeley professor said that improving the hand-eye machines has remained mainly an academic quest, because businesses would rather prefect computer systems they have already invested in than support innovation in the field.

"I kind of share Roger Brockett's point of view that this is the correct thing to do from an academic standpoint even if it isn't what industry is crying for," said Sastry.

The Harvard Robotics Laboratory is also attempting to improve computer vision through work with a binocular machine vision system, which has "eyes" that are small television cameras mounted on motors.

Scientists hope to enable computers to see in three dimensions. In the lab, research teams use 20 to 30 microprocessors--the brains of modern computers--to try to coordinate the computer hand and vision.

"Certainly this binocular head system would be very interesting once we get it going," said James J. Clark, the assistant professor of Electorical Engineering on the Gordon McKay Endowment. "Vision, when you start thinking about it, is a very interesting problem."

The improvement of computer vision could also have business applications.