MIT's Supernumerary Robotic Fingers To Enhance Human Hand's Grasping Motion

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a novel wrist-mounted robot that will aid human hand for carrying out simple day to day activities such as lifting heavy objects, opening jars, stirring coffee by holding a coffee mug, twisting a screw driver, etc. These simple activities are easy to perform using both hands but become difficult to perform single-handedly.

Robo

The device works like two extra fingers that are adjacent to the thumb and little finger of the wearer’s hand. The control algorithm makes it possible for the device to enhance human hand’s grasping motion by moving it in sync with the wearer’s fingers while grabbing or holding different objects. According to Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, there is no need to give any command to the device to perform this task. The robot tries to learn the natural movements of the fingers and also provide help to the fingers for carrying out a particular task.

rob

While performing the grasping motion like holding a bottle or any other object, the actuators in the device are linked together to apply forces which have the same strength as those of human fingers. The fingers of a hand are highly coordinated and this bio-mechanical synergy hypothesis proposed by researchers has helped them in developing the control algorithm to move the robot’s fingers in sync with the wearer’s. The two-fingered robot has multiple position-recording sensors. These recordings help the algorithm in teaching the device to assume certain posture that the human wants it to take.

The research team wants to take their work one step ahead by not only controlling the posture of the robotic fingers but also their force. They want their robot to work with small, heavy objects along with slippery objects of same size and shape - where the posture to hold them will be same, but will require different force.

It seems that this new technology will surely help old people or the ones among us with limited abilities to perform the routine tasks. Such a wearable robot will definitely make their daily life easier.


Source: #-Link-Snipped-#

Replies

You are reading an archived discussion.

Related Posts

I have just graduated from college and am really passionate about learning and working with lots of software technologies and love what technology can do for the world. I am...
Every person should listen to this song or atleast read its lyrics , atleast once. Lyrics : https://rap.genius.com/Hopsin-ill-mind-of-hopsin-7-lyrics It takes balls to talk about religion . Marcus earned a lot...
Can anyone suggest sequence of prefrence in terms of placement of MCA in IPU amongs college i.e. Banarasidas, Rukmini devi, DIAS, Bhai parmanand, ....... Plz suggest the best college in...
I did backup of contacts in vcf file from my old HTC phone. But it was totally messed up as there are lots of contacts in phone memory from them...
Too tired of trying the different compilers for c programs. I have windows 7 64 bit installed and want a compiler for c programs. I installed turbo c++ but it...