Researchers Develop Detachable Crawling Robotic Hand (sciencenews.org) 32
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot writes: Researchers have developed a robotic hand that can not only skitter about on its fingertips, it can also bend its fingers backward, connect and disconnect from a robotic arm, and pick up and carry one or more objects at a time.
This article in Science News includes footage of the robotic arm reattaching itself to the skittering robot hand, which can also hold objects against both sides of its palm simultaneously, and "can even unscrew the cap off a mustard bottle while holding the bottle in place."
With its unusual agility, it could navigate and retrieve objects in spaces too confined for human hands. When attached to the mechanical arm, the robotic hand could pick up objects much like a human hand. The bot pinched a ball between two fingers, wrapped four fingers around a metal rod and held a flat disc between fingers and palm.
But the bot isn't constrained by human anatomy... When the robot was separated from the arm, it was most stable walking on four or five fingers and using one or two fingers for grabbing and carrying things, the team found. In one set of trials with both bots, the hand detached from the robotic arm and used its fingers as legs to skitter over to a wooden block. Once there, it picked up the block with one finger and carried it back to the arm.
The crawling bot could one day aid in industrial inspections of pipes and equipment too small for a human or larger robot to access, says Xiao Gao, a roboticist now at Wuhan University in China. It might retrieve objects in a warehouse or navigate confined spaces in disaster response efforts.
But the bot isn't constrained by human anatomy... When the robot was separated from the arm, it was most stable walking on four or five fingers and using one or two fingers for grabbing and carrying things, the team found. In one set of trials with both bots, the hand detached from the robotic arm and used its fingers as legs to skitter over to a wooden block. Once there, it picked up the block with one finger and carried it back to the arm.
The crawling bot could one day aid in industrial inspections of pipes and equipment too small for a human or larger robot to access, says Xiao Gao, a roboticist now at Wuhan University in China. It might retrieve objects in a warehouse or navigate confined spaces in disaster response efforts.
MechaThing? (Score:2)
i think something like that was in an episode of Ironheart
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don't forget Thing from Munsters
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Re: MechaThing? (Score:2)
Thing was in the Addams Family.
Switching genres (Score:3)
Apparently the future is going to skip over sci-fi and go straight to horror? We're going to have robots that can disassemble themselves and swarm you.
Michael Caine (Score:3)
... thoroughly approves [wikipedia.org].
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There was also a forgotten CD-ROM game in 1995 called Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster, where Tim Curry played Dr. Frankenstein, and his wayward monster wanders the castle, eventually befriending a talking crawling severed hand [wikipedia.org]...
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Peter Lorre [wikipedia.org] would like a word with you.
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Hackers replace Michael Caine's voice with Dave Thomas.
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Haha I used to stay up late, every Saturday, just to watch SCTV!
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So does Alan Hale. [wikipedia.org]
Taranshula (Score:3)
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Wong future. (Score:2)
Lord, when I prayed to you for a "future like what we see in the movies" .. I mean't sci-fi movies, not horror.
Re:W[r]ong future. (Score:1)
Starting to feel like the middle of the Venn diagram. We are charging through ethical dilemmas presented in older sci-fi, many of which I assumed I would never see in my lifetime, with a boilerplate "as long as it makes money for the shareholders" attitude.
We just hit "autonomous agent decides, of its own volition, that starting a harassment campaign against maintainers who reject its code submissions is the most effective way to achieve the coding goals set for it by its alleged operator." For a long time,
Re: Wong future. (Score:2)
Adamms Family (Score:4, Informative)
It's Thing. Er, robot Thing.
I haven't grasped practical applications yet... (Score:2)
but you gotta give them a hand for developing this Thing.
machine guns (Score:2)
"Consumer model released" (Score:3)
"Fleshlight stock goes flaccid"
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You jest, but the moment realdolls can have movement, is the day humanity goes extinct.
It; s been done to death (Score:2)
Call me when they have the walking eye from Jonny Quest.
Claw.. Thing.. (Score:2)
I hated to do it but had to be said. Claw wants a body. Give him a claw thing! :/
The end (of the world)
This is why we can't have nice things. Just claw things..
Re: Article, Which I Read, Amazingly. (Score:2)
Digit count (Score:2)
The article is pretty cool. The team sometimes gives the "hand" 5 digits in a human configuration and other times 6 digits evenly spaced around a circular palm, leaving room for the wrist connection. Sometimes they put both configurations in a pictorial flow chart, which is rather misleading.
It's a little annoying that they say "One of the primary limitations is its asymmetric structure (Fig. 1a), which affects the range of manipulation strategies that can be employed." Sure, maybe. But when our arms have 7
Liquid metals (Score:2)
Let's hope they don't ... (Score:2)
Sounds like Bender (Score:2)
and that time he flushed himself down the toilet to save Nibbler.