🦾 Schoolboy Builds Robot Hand From LEGO Parts

16-year-old Jared Lepora started the project two years ago. His father, a professor of robotics and AI at the University of Bristol, gave him a helping hand.

The robotic hand is made exclusively from beams, rods, gears, and more than a hundred plastic bearings from the LEGO Mindstorms series for creating programmable robots.

The only parts not from LEGO are the cords that function as the hand's tendons.

The LEGO robot hand has four fingers, each with three joints, connected by gear wheels, and the tendons are controlled by drives.

The hand can grasp and hold objects weighing up to 1 kg.

The LEGO Mindstorms series was discontinued in 2022, but Jared says the device can be assembled using other LEGO pieces.

"Learning about robotic hands through building them with our own hands seems a particularly apt way to engage with this technology," writes Jared in a research paper he published with his father.

@hiaimediaen