H/t: IEEE Spectrum
Columbia University researchers have developed a robotic hand that can use touch alone to manipulate objects without a vision system. It achieves this by placing a flexible reflective membrane beneath the skin of each finger. Underneath the membrane lies an LED array as well as photodiodes, and when each LED is cycled on or off, the latter records how the light reflects off the inner membrane.
As the inner membrane flexes, the patter of that reflection changes, and a trained model correlates that light pattern with the location and breadth of the finger contacts. Since every object is different, reinforcement learning is required to figure out how to manipulate them the desired way. The next step is adding visual feedback into the mix along with touch to achieve even more dexterity.
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Once we also add visual feedback into the mix along with touch, we hope to be able to achieve even more dexterity, and one day start approaching the replication of the human hand,” Matei Ciocarlie, Columbia University.