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Funky Robotic Hand
seldo writes "The BBC is carrying a story about a funky-looking robotic hand with the full range of 24 hand movements (NASA's best effort so far has 12, apparently). It's supposed to be for the disabled, although a spokesman for the British Council of Disabled People points out that everyday tasks are not really what the disabled need help with anymore. I just want one to play with :-)" Update: 08/08 17:58 GMT by T : You may be reminded of the DIY robot head from several months ago -- a perfect match?
Interesting method of actuation: IIRC, these work in the reverse of organic muscles, in that they are capable only of pushing rather than only pulling. This introduces its own set of limitations but does act quickly to close the gap on basic cabilites engineering.
Still not useful to those who've lost only a hand as the actuation gizmos do take up quite a bit of space, but certainly an impressive achievement.
Any spoon would be too big.
OK, back when I was about 8-10 years old (can't remember exactly), I got obsessed about building a robot. It simply had to be done, and I pestered my father (an electronics engineer) mercilessly about it. He tried to explain that it was just NOT a simple project, but I wouldn't listen.
Finally, I wore him down, and "we" (meaning him, and I watched) built a robotic hand. It was actually pretty clever, considering the primitiveness of it. The thumb, index finger and middle fingers were completed before I FINALLY lost interest and saw that it wasn't as easy as I thought.
He basically used some steel pipe that he filed into joints, and used springs to return the fingers to the outstretched position. A cable running through the pipe connected to the end of the finger tips caused them to contract.
Unfortunately, the middle finger broke off at one point, and has been lost. For the first time on the web, here are some pictures. It was made a little under 30 years ago or so. I should have taken a picture of the fingers contracted, but I didn't think of it until now. Maybe I'll go back and add one. :)
My father died about 10 years ago, but this is one my most treasured possessions. It's a testament to the fact that he seldom blew me off when I was interested in something, and did his best to help me (and I probably deserved to be blown off for this request!)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"Disabled people are quite clear that we need adequate support and personal assistance which is flexible.
:)
"This is not only to do the basic tasks, but also to do other, more sophisticated tasks, which are essential to our well being, such as getting out of the house, meeting new people and having genuine control over our daily living."
The problem with this quote is basically it's saying "Disabled people need slaves". Last I checked there's not a large pool of reliable, trustworthy people that want to become slaves. My grandpa has gone excessively senile and my grandma has to do everything for him. Now, I love my grandpa, but I'd never be able to stand having to be on call 24/7/52 whenever he needed anything. What these "gadgets" ARE good for is working towards the next best thing: independance. Being able to do everything you want to do under your own initiative instead of having someone else do it. Leaving the house and meeting friends when you want to, and not having to convince, or order, someone else to.
Lets face it, you can't manufacture human slaves. At least not in the US
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Translate this into plain english for those of us who never took physics?
Strength:
* Wrist : 1.5Nm
* Distal : 0.5 Nm (Fingers / Thumb)
* Proximal : 1.0 Nm (Fingers / Thumb)
Are we talking million $ man strength here or more like tinkertoy strength?
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
No, when I think "funky robot hand" - I always think of that extremely dextrous, three-fingered robot hand that was shown way back in the 1980's on such shows like "That's Incredible" and "Beyond 2000" - I can't find any pictures online of it, though I think it was one of the incarnations of the Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand Master system (I found plenty on the system, but they don't have the same hand I remember). One thing I remember that was most funky about the hand was that the fingers could flex inward and outward, to hold and manipulate large ring type pieces. Each finger had base abduction, and multiple flexing movement - it seemed to be driven by steppers with flexible cables. They had a demo (which seemed staged, and the hand without feedback sensors at the time) showing it handling and manipulating various items - very impressive, fluid, and beautiful to watch in action.
Does anyone here know of what I am talking about - and can anyone find images? I admit I didn't do a major exhaustive Google search - only delved a few pages in the results...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Supposing that one of my hands was missing one of these might be a nice thing to have for everyday applications, but why are we limiting ourselves to emulating biology? why not take our bodies in a drastically different direction? All those nerve endings that used to control the dexterous muscles in a hand could be used for more than just controling a new hand, given a little practise. Back to supposing my hand was missing, I spend a great deal of time typing every day, I'm sure there are more than enough nerve signals flowing through my wrists to create every character on a standard keyboard, but there would need to be an intermediate interpretation/conversion device. With such a device I could keep one hand on the mouse while typing at full speed. Disablity becomes advantage.
The artificial muscle they are using are pretty interesting. Its called the Mckibben artificial muscle and the basic design has been around for a while. Here's a link that gives a basic overview and shows you how to make one:
Mckibben muscle page
And here's one where a guy actually integrated it into his lego mindstorms!
Lego air muscle
Thanks for translating it into Newtonian english for me, but the second part of my question still goes unanswered.
Assuming unlimited strength at the elbow how much (in jym-room barbell english) can this arm lift and swing?
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so