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Cheap Four-fingered Robot Hand Edges Closer To Human Dexterity
ananyo writes "A robot that can reproduce the dexterity of the human hand remains a dream of the bioengineering profession. One new approach to achieving this goal avoids trying to replicate the intricacy of the bones, joints and ligaments that produce our most basic gestures. A Sandia National Laboratories research team has adopted just such a strategy by designing a modular, plastic proto-hand whose electronics system is largely made from parts found in cell phones. The Sandia Hand can still perform with a high level of finesse for a robot, and is even capable of replacing the batteries in a small flashlight. It is expected to cost about $10,000, a fraction of the $250,000 price tag for a state-of-the-art robot hand today. The Sandia Hand's fingers are modular and affixed to the hand frame via magnets. This gives the researchers the flexibility to design interchangeable appendages tipped with screwdrivers, flashlights, cameras and other tools. The fingers are also designed to detach automatically to avoid damage if the hand hits a wall or other solid object too hard. The researchers say the hand can even be manipulated to retrieve and reattach a fallen finger. The Hand's current incarnation has only four fingers, including the equivalent of an opposable thumb. In the video with the article, the Sandia Hand demonstrates a number of capabilities, including, perhaps most impressively, dropping a AA battery into a flashlight."
Owners of adult book and sex toy shops everywhere eagerly await that windfall.
I am running a breeding program to produce smart cats with opposable thumbs on my secret tropical island in the Pacific.
They can already open their own cans of catfood.
You are all doomed.
--
BMO
I'm surprised that this and walking are such difficult tasks for robots. I would have thought that reverse engineering the hand would be easy once you've got actuators working. And the human gait has been observed to death and yet we can barely get the robots to walk. It's amazing that these structures we have working examples of cannot be mimiced yet in this day and age. Working consciousness, computer vision, anything that involves some sort of understanding on the part of the machine - I get. But a physical thing like the hand or the human gait? Both seem really well understood.
But I guess they apparently aren't.
I officially announce an ardiuno contest, for person to make a working hand without a spending 10,000-250,000 dollars, wins some glory or something...
...but I want it anyway.
the "$250,000 state-of-the-art robot hand"
Come on, you know you were thinking about it.
Seems like an arrangement of two fingers on one side and an opposed thumb on the other would be sufficient.
This would also be a little less "uncanny valley".
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Making a glove?
Why make an electronic glove when you can wear a specially printed regular glove and use several cameras to see where everything is?
This kind of thing makes me almost wish I'd lost a finger or a hand sometime. Screwdrivers? Cameras? Flashlights? Fingers that FALL OFF instead of HURTING when they get hit? My flesh-and-bone phalanges take too long to heal as it is. Next time I hurt one, it's coming right off.
"perhaps most impressively, dropping a AA battery into a flashlight"
The hand struggles with the insertion and then the video is cut right before the flashlight is about to fall.
but you don't by any chance happen to have 6 fingers on your right hand?
I find it interesting that they are apparently using a DJ oriented USB/MIDI Controller - albeit possibly just using the crossfader to control speed ( or tempo ) - of movement through a the pre-programmed (MIDI?) sequence.
Do not think that the four-fingered hands of our robotic overlords are cartoonish at all.
Let's see your vinyl control a robot!
I saw a documentary once about some poor Chinese guy who lost all his fingers in some kind of accident. The Chinese doctors removed some of his toes (the guy had pretty long toes) and ginned up a three-fingered hand for him with, of course, toes for fingers. It appeared to work really well. The guy seemed damned happy about it. Come to think of it, I would be, too.
I looked briefly for a link to the old China story, but only came up with an upbeat human interest yarn about an American guy born with two fingers on one hand getting this same operation. He was fine with his congenital two-fingered hand but needed a toe transplant only after he cut off one of the two fingers on his defective hand using a table saw. After some physio he is doing better with three than he did with two. Even if two of them were (are?) toes. Which, frankly, comes as no great surprise.
So I guess a robot with three fingers would be pretty functional, too.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
..to giving someone the finger!
now that they have decent hands, we will have robots stealing our cereal. they're always after me lucky charms.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
As I was saying, a robot maid is far more convenient than a flying car. It may take me longer to get home in a normal car, but once I get there my house will be clean, my clothes folded, my lawn will be cut, my trash will be out and there will be food on my table.
Have to steal and attach another one to actually have a middle finger to give!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
(end of message)
Seriously though, I have always wondered, if we had 8 total fingers/thumbs, would we have a base 8 number system?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
...which was completely ruined by the music. I get that you're showing off something futurist, but I'm not watching a fan-made video for my favorite band.
This exemplifies why Science Fiction was too optimistic when it assumed that robots (real thinking robots, not the programmable waldos that presently go by that name) would be ubiquitous by now. The basic things humans can do — parse visual data, parse language, manipulate object, make decisions based on complicated data sets — appear to be simple, but are actually complicated processes that resulted from millions of years of evolutionary tweaking.
I'd mention the problems with the Three Laws of Robotics, but that always starts a flame war with some rabid Asimov fan, so I'll refrain. I will say that I think that machines that can truly think are still a long way away, and when they do appear they'll be as different from us as airplanes are from birds.
...and the robot's weaknesses. The fluidity of the arm and hand are nearly as good as a human's. But the hand is human controlled. If this was controlled by a computer, it probably wouldn't be able to do many of the things in the video. But even forgiving that, it's the fluidity that would be lacking. Humans can make incredibly detailed and precise movements without thinking, something computers are probably still decades away from duplicating (maybe more).
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Mickey Mouse and all his friends and all the cartoon characters since have done well with 4 fingers.
Humans and most creatures with more than four digits are wasting at least one of them. Where is your dog's thumb? What's it good for? Yes, scratching it's ear, that's all. How often do you need all five appendages to accomplish something worthwhile? You can even throw a Series winning curve ball with only 4.
OK, many robot designers have used a minimal number of fingers, but a few have stubbornly looked for five finger solutions. Four seems optimal.
...omphaloskepsis often...
My first mixer. I think they are using it for applying force in an analog way...I never would have thought of that.
- William Gates III.
I suppose they kept costs down by using MIDI ( note the USB/MIDI DJ controller they use to modulate the 'tempo' of the sequence ).
Note the use of off the shelf hardware ( MIDI/USB DJ controller, sending a tempo CC, changing the speed of the (MIDI?) sequence ). I find MIDI to be very usefull in embedded project controllers.
When they attempted to use the robotic hand to automate functions in a nuclear reactor plant, the experiment failed miserably. Unfortunately, the hand is only adept at opening cans of Duff beer and eating donuts.
No one, not for any money wans to wash dishes in restaurants or clean public toilets.
If the problem solved in robust and realistic way, there would be the billions' market for such robotized devices.
Across the face of the Earth, slashdotters everywhere raise their unkempt heads. For the first time hope shines in their reddened, monitor-strained eyes. As one, they unleash a great cry of joy into the fapmosphere, and shout, "Wow...that would REALLY feel like somebody else!"
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Soon claiming a robot arm did it will be a good legal defense.
Mickey Mouse and all his friends and all the cartoon characters since have done well with 4 fingers.
Cartoon characters don't lose fingers permanently. Humans do. The fifth finger is for redundancy in case another finger becomes inoperable.
That is interesting. Where did you find that out? It's too cool. Is the increased activity causing some stem cells to trigger and develop new tissue?. How does the toe somehow know? Thanks sjames.
I don't know if you watched the clip I linked to, but the guy had seemingly had higher functionality in the end with his toe fingered hand than he did with his congenitally disabled hand. Hopefully he stays away from his table saw.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy