A number of technologies related to robotics and machine learning have rapidly advanced in recent years, which has resulted in the development of some very capable robots. But these advancements have done more than just give us machines that are more useful than those of the past — they have also given us fuel for nightmares. This is especially true in the case of humanoid robots, where facial expressions, eye contact, and other behaviors that are very close to correct — but not quite — are often found to be very unsettling.
Now we have a whole new class of weird to deal with in the world of robotics. In a move that is sure to give new meaning to the phrase "lending a hand," roboticists from EPFL in Switzerland unveiled a game-changing robot at ICRA@40 this week. Appropriately named the “ Handcrawler ,” this robotic hand can detach from its arm, scurry around like a spider, pick up a few things, then reattach itself like it’s no big deal.
This may seem like some kind of a prank for Halloween at first blush, but this is actually a very useful skill for a stationary robot arm. When something is out of reach, the hand, which is attached to the arm via magnets and a locking screw, can be released to go grab it and bring it within range before reattaching for further manipulation.
A walking-grasping-hand-thing is not exactly a standard part that one can find off-the-shelf, so the researchers had their work cut out for them in designing it. They turned to a genetic algorithm that searched for an optimal design — including the number and placement of fingers — in a simulated environment. It was found that the best design was a five-fingered hand in which two can be used for grasping objects (when detached), while the other three are used for crawling. Each finger has four degrees of freedom and can bend in either direction, which enables it to lift a load up high without interfering with the crawling motion.
The team has largely been manually controlling the Handcrawler, but they have also been testing out an autonomous version of the system. Whether or not detached, autonomous robot hands crawling all over the place is a good thing remains to be seen.I feel like something is missing… (📷: Xiao Gao)
The genetic algorithm ran in a simulated environment (📷: Xiao Gao)
