It is comparatively easier to make robots than programming them or designing them to make them grip objects. To grip something, it has to understand what it is gripping, what is the weight of the object it is gripping and how much force it should apply to not to break it or drop it. One starts admiring the dexterity God has provided us with, when one tries to imitate and incorporate it in robots.
Very recently at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Bianca Homberg, Daniela Rus (the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) and their colleagues showed the latest advance in robotic digits. The robots that they have developed have modular fingers made of silicone and embedded with sensors. These fingers are dexterous enough to pick up everything from soft toys to single pieces of paper without needing to be programmed to understand what it’s gripping.
It is to be noted that MIT has done a lot of work in making robotic hands this year and Daniela Rus is actually a sort of pioneer in soft robotics. In the latest design of robots, three molded silicone fingers, ribbed on the inside edge to ease bending and increase friction, are slid over the digits of a robotic arm. While robotic hands generally use a sensor nearby, like a camera or a motion sensor Russ embedded a bending sensor in each finger. When each finger’s sensor bends and sends a signal that it’s touching an object, it knows to stop tightening its grasp.
Together, they help the robot generate a triple-sided understanding of what object it’s grasping. Owing to the soft compliance of the silicone, the fingers can pick up even fragile objects that range wildly in size without prior warning about what the hand is about to encounter, from eggs and CDs to beanie babies, hairbrushes, water bottles, and single pieces of paper. The authors have explained all these things in “Haptic Identification of Objects using a Modular Soft Robotic Gripper.”
According to the authors “Robots should be able to pick up a variety of tools designed for human use and be able to handle them appropriately,” and they have certainly provided ‘thinking’ fingers to the robot by this new technique. Robotics is surely taking giant leaps towards a brighter future.
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Author:Technology Blog
