A Robotic Hand That Detaches and Crawls—But Don’t Be Alarmed, It’s All Part of the Plan! Engineers from the Swiss Federa…

A Robotic Hand That Detaches and Crawls—But Don’t Be Alarmed, It’s All Part of the Plan!

Engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and MIT have unveiled a five-fingered robotic hand that can detach from its main manipulator and crawl independently. Operating autonomously, the hand can grasp objects beyond the reach of the primary robot, then return and reattach itself.

Each finger of the robotic hand has four degrees of freedom and can bend in both directions relative to the plane of the hand. The developers used a genetic algorithm to determine the optimal number of fingers and their placement on the cylindrical palm.

In the basic configuration, the autonomous hand uses only two fingers to grasp and hold one, two, or even three objects, while the remaining fingers are employed for locomotion.

This innovation could be extremely useful for working in confined spaces.

@science