There’s Clone Robotics’ synthetic hand V18, and then MIT’s robotic hand that is capable of identifying objects using highly sensitive fingers. Rather than packing all of the sensors directly into the fingertip, the team developed a robotic finger with a rigid skeleton encased in a soft outer layer fitted with multiple high-resolution sensors incorporated under its transparent skin.
These sensors use a camera and LEDs to gather visual information about an object’s shape, while providing continuous sensing along the finger’s entire length. Each finger collects rich data on many parts of an object simultaneously. This resulted in a three-fingered robotic hand that could identify objects after grasping an object once, with about 85% accuracy. Practical applications include using it as an at-home-care robot or lifting items off shelves carefully.
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Having both soft and rigid elements is very important in any hand, but so is being able to perform great sensing over a really large area, especially if we want to consider doing very complicated manipulation tasks like what our own hands can do. Our goal with this work was to combine all the things that make our human hands so good into a robotic finger that can do tasks other robotic fingers can’t currently do,” said Sandra Liu, co-lead author of a research paper on the robotic finger.
