X PRIZE Foundation: Sophisticated Robotic Hand Doubles as a Human Exoskeleton. By David J. HillContributing Writer, Singularity University. It may be time to jettison the notion that robots in the future will have grippers or claws for hands. The German robotics company Festo recently unveiled the ExoHand, a sophisticated robotic hand that is capable of the fine motor skills that allows the human hand to have a delicate touch or perform complex manipulations. The ExoHand comes in two forms: as the extremity of a robotic arm or a wearable exoskeleton glove. The system is designed so that the glove can aid assembly line workers performing repetitive tasks with their hands or be used for the remote manipulation of the robotic arm by a user wearing the glove.
At this year's Hannover Messe industrial fair, which profiles the world's most innovative products, the ExoHand came in second for the Best-In-Show Hermes Award. Check out the demo that shows how ExoHand can be used for remote operations: [Media: Festo, YouTube] [Source: Festo] Obrero. Sushi Robot and Patisserie Robot : DigInfo. Definition of a Pantograph. Handle Photo Gallery. Robotic Gripper Made from Coffee-Filled Balloon Picks Up Anything. As robot hands go, this is the weirdest I've ever seen. But you know what? It works really well.
Researchers at Cornell University, University of Chicago, and iRobot reported this week that they've developed a fingerless robotic gripper made from a rubber bag filled with coffee grounds. The gripper can transition from a soft state, when it's easily deformable and can conform to the shape of various objects, to a rigid state, when it can firmly hold the objects.
The secret, the researchers report in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is the "jamming" phase transition of granular materials -- in this case, coffee grounds. The approach, they write, "opens up new possibilities for the design of simple, yet highly adaptive systems that excel at fast gripping of complex objects.” Researchers have used the "jamming" principle for robot locomotion before, but this appears to be the first application in manipulation. So how does it work? Presenting the Universal Jamming Gripper.