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Making Robots Mimic the Human Hand
RougeFemme writes "As part of a research project to develop low-cost artificial hands, DARPA has developed a two-hand robot that can almost change a tire. Research has mastered grasping objects with robotic hands; the next objective is to manipulate the objects once grasped. Research also continues on a neural interface, a direct link between a robotic arm and the human brain. The ultimate goal of the research project is to develop prostethics and robotic arms for wider use, by reducing cost and improving dexterity and machine vision."
Can the robot jerk off?
I would never let that thing near my car, look how it trashes the lug treads.
New signature coming soon.
A nanobot swarm could become any shape you want it to be.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
when it's rusted to the hub.
Almost change a tire? Incredible! What's next? A medical robot that can almost save a person's life?
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
Give them a small unique trait or feature, a camera, a mirror
and lots of competition.
Almost drive a car like autopilot can almost fly on it's own.
we will all need some kind of basic income and health care before the bots take most of the jobs
Our healthcare system will change to become one where all health problems are treated by replacing the faulty biological "part" with a robotic implant, until we all eventually become the robots that replaced us.
But the porn industry is always at the forefront of all stuff tech, so they will more than likely be the first one to have an advanced robot model capable of handjobs.....
and his fake alter-ego as well
Just the thing I need when I almost need a tire changed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I mean, even I can ALMOST change a tyre.
You should take a lesson from this guy. Short, sweet, and it actually makes sense!
I can almost watch the video. Come on ny times is an mp4 really that hard? 30% of all Internet traffic is on a mobile device.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"Jazz hands!"
DARPA has had some of those two-handed robots for a few years now, and has researchers working with them. So far, the results have been disappointing. They can pick up a screwdriver, but not use it. Robots manipulating a powered socket wrench in a well-defined environment aren't a big deal; auto assembly lines have had those for years. Putting a key in a lock, slowly, is about the upper limit of that project.
Part of the problem is that simulators for manipulation aren't very good. Willow Garage is funded to take the current version of the Gazebo simulator and make it work for manipulation. But I doubt they'll be able to make it good enough to do manipulation using force feedback. The physics engines they're using are for game physics; they cheat on frictional contacts. You need a really good simulator to debug control software for putting a nut on a bolt by feel.
Howard: CAN YOU PLEASE, just, help me?!
Althea: Alright, alright, hang on, stay calm. I need an orderly with a wheelchair, I got a robot hand grasping a man's penis out here.
Howard: You think you could be a little more discrete?!
Althea: I'm sorry, we don't have a code for a robot hand grasping a man's penis.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The main reason we still don't have all this stuff is because humans try to invent them.
Just copy nature.
We now have a robot that can remove our tires.
What hath we wrought!?
What when this thing escapes the lab and goes feral on city streets?
We puny humans may be able to guard our cars against this menace. But what of the self-driving Googlecars? They will be helpless against its stealth attacks.
We invented the wheel, we should not just give that up to the robots or it'll be Judgement Day all over again.
We could all go to trade school full time and be each other's apprentices.
Rather surprised you didn't suggest that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
ISTM that changing an offside tyre on a busy motorway is probably more dangerous than defusing a bomb.
I do a lot of actual work these days (as opposed to key-punching) and you might say I am highly in touch with the amazing abilities of the human hand. Sex life aside, the sheer sensitivity and flexibility of the hand is awesome to consider. There's no robot yet that can pick arbitrary parts out of a bin (or, say, out of some gravel) and hold them in one part of its gripper while another part feels for the part's mounting location, then advance the parts into place (rotating them into the proper position as they go) and finally be able to push, twist, etc. in such a broad variety of fashions in order to install it... and then follow that trick up by picking up a tool to finish the job.
We're a long, long way from a good mimic of the human hand. It's not clear that anything in between a good one and what we have now is particularly useful as compared to purpose-made manipulators. Robots aren't that great at navigating varied terrain anyway, so using purpose-built robots isn't a big problem. We have to deliver them, regardless.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Finally - A stranger without having to sit on my arm for 20 minutes!
see: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
I agree the human hand is a marvel, along with hand-eye coordination. But these sorts of technologies are rapid displacing the value of much paid human labor in different areas of the economy. Creating factories generally means re-engineering most tasks so they fit what machines can do. Service industries will also do that more and more (like the US post-office automates, fast-food places automate, hospitals automate, people get household vacuuming robots or buy prepared food, etc..) This means our economic social contract is breaking down where an adult's right to consume was linked to selling his or her labor in the market -- as predicted decades ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Revolution
A basic income is one way to address this, but there are a mix of others.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Yes, and we should be planning for that now! Our path out of any technological singularity may have a lot to do with our path into it, and that path includes our politics and socio-economics. Are we going to wait twenty years until most human labor has little value even in most service industries?
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
Other thing we can do beyond a basic income include expanding our gift economy, improving democratic participatory planning at all levels of government, and improving tools for local subsistence (like gardening robots and cheap solar panels).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_credit
"In the United Federation of Planets, Replicators and other advanced technologies provide for virtually all basic material wants and needs equally and sufficiently to all. Every citizen of the Federation has plenty of food of virtually any type they want, clothes, shelter, recreational and luxury items, and has all their basic material needs easily met. A society based around self-improvement and collectively improving the human race instead of cutthroat competition, combined with heavy automation, means labor is essentially free, menial tasks are automated, and goods are made freely available to all citizens due to superabundance. As seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes featuring Jake and Joseph Sisko, people are apparently not paid in credits for their work."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
it would impress much more if the movement was done by some sort of muscle contracting mechanism instead of step or dc motors. why no one is developing it?
Amazon has warehouses without lights or people and there exists a $100,000 machine that can make hamburgers (pitched to unemploy parts of McDonalds).
For industry - this technology will work to unemploy more people. FOXCOMs answer to charges of labor abuses is to move to robotic assembly lines. MasterLock used to employ 1000's - and moved production back to the US of A once robots could replace most of thoes workers.
For DARPA - the farther a human is from the killing another human, the "eaiser" war is to wage.
This is changing a wheel; that's removing a few nuts from some studs and doing an orientation for refit. Changing a tyre is something entirely different.
If you are an European citizen, then please sign this.
This is a citizen's initiative to explore basic income guarantee - if it gets 1M+ signatures before January 2014, budget will be allocated to this.