Creepy walking robo-hand brings Addams Family to life. Could make future bots more versatile.
Give them a hand.A team of Swiss robo-scientists has made a creepy mechanical hand that can scuttle along different surfaces like the love child of The Terminator and “Addams Family” sidekick, The Thing.The research team from ETH Zurich’s Soft Robotics Lab admitted they were inspired by Morticia’s disembodied butler, Fast Company reported.And much like its movie counterpart, this anthropomorphic appendage can perform a variety of fine motor movements, ranging from moving blocks to typing on a keyboard, as demonstrated in a video tutorial.Knock the cyborg hand over and it can even right itself like a giant cybernetic hermit crab.But what’s the point of an automated hand, besides pranking your friends on Halloween?Robotics engineer Amirhossein Kazemipour told FC that it was about creating a machine with “some independence” outside of a larger body — and potentially giving independence to people with difficulties reaching or grasping objects, too.In their new paper in the journal Axriv, Kazemipour and the other researchers wrote that the hand “could move toward a control or object, interact with it, and return for retrieval.”They added, “Giving robotic hands their own mobility could make future robots more versatile in the spaces and interfaces built for people.”The researchers didn’t specify the exact tasks the robo-hand would be completing, although tech-sperts suspect that the gadget could be used to enhance life-size droids, Futurism reported.The Cyber-Thing contains a battery, an onboard computer and multiple sensors that allowed it to interface with a complex environment.That lets the creepy robo-crawler navigate complex terrain ranging from grass to stone, all at a steady speed.
Most impressively, the hand became a retro gaming prodigy, using its fast fingers to ace the classic arcade puzzle Sokoban.But the hand has a ways to go before performing brain surgery or mastering a Rachmaninoff piano concerto.For one thing, it’s battery li...