Skip to main content

Robot hand is dexterous enough to screw in a lightbulb, turn a screwdriver

Custom Soft Robotic Gripper Sensor Skins for Haptic Object Visualization
How many robots does it take to screw in a light bulb? If you’re talking about a new soft robotic gripper developed by engineers at the University of California, San Diego, the answer is just one. The soft robot gripper in question is able to pick up and manipulate objects based on touch alone, meaning that it can do so regardless of lighting conditions.

“In this work, we developed a soft gripper that uses tactile sensing to model the objects it’s interacting with,” Michael Tolley, a roboticist at UC San Diego, told Digital Trends. “By rotating the object around in-hand, similar to what you would do when you reach into your pocket and feel for your keys, the gripper can map out a point cloud representing the object. Our gripper is unique in its ability to twist, sense, and model objects, allowing the gripper to operate in low light, low visibility, and uncertain conditions.”

Recommended Videos

The robot hand has three soft flexible fingers, which are powered pneumatically using air pressure. Sensors in the robot’s “skin” allow it to work out what it’s holding, and transmit this data to a control board, which creates a three-dimensional model of the object for reference.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

When the gripper hand was attached to an industrial Fetch Robotics robot arm for testing, the researchers demonstrated that it was able to carry out a range of fine precision tasks, such as the aforementioned screwing in of lightbulbs — along with turning screwdrivers and holding individual sheets of paper.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“[As the next stage of research,] we are interested in incorporating techniques from machine learning to allow the gripper to semantically identify the objects it’s manipulating,” Tolley said. “We are also prototyping a 3D-printed version of the gripper for more consistent fabrication. We would [additionally] like to test with a wider variety of objects that also contain uncertainty in their positioning and orientation.”

In the real world, Tolley says he hopes a robot gripper such as this might be useful for tasks like fruit picking, or potentially working as an assistive robot in the home. To reach this point, it will need to be further put through its paces with a more extensive set of real-world objects.

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
This speedy, tiny soft robot was inspired by the way a cheetah runs
north carolina state cheetah robot

video combined

Researchers at North Carolina State University have built a cheetah-inspired robot. But it doesn’t look quite like what you’re probably expecting. While we’re used to robots like Boston Dynamics’ canine-inspired, full-sized dog robots, North Carolina State’s cheetah robot is just 7 centimeters long (2.75 inches) and weighs only 45 grams (just over 1.5 ounces). For those who don’t qualify as wildlife experts, that’s considerably smaller than a real-life adult cheetah, which can measure around 4.5 feet in length, and weigh between 75 and 150 pounds.

Read more
Stanford’s shape-shifting ‘balloon animal’ robot could one day explore space
Stanford soft robotics 1

Stanford engineers develop crawling and transforming soft robot

The cool thing about balloon animals is that, using the same basic inflatable building blocks, a skilled person can create just about anything you could ask for. That same methodology is what’s at the heart of a recent Stanford University and University of California, Santa Barbara, soft robotics project. Described by its creators as a “large-scale isoperimetric soft robot,” it’s a human-scale robot created from a series of identical robot roller modules that are mounted onto inflatable fabric tubes. Just like the balloon animals you remember, this leads to some impressive shape-shifting inventiveness.

Read more
Because 2020’s not crazy enough, a robot mouth is singing A.I. prayers in Paris
The Prayer

Diemut Strebe: The Prayer

In these troubling, confusing times, it can be tough to know who to turn to for help. One possible answer? A disembodied robot mouth chanting algorithmically generated Gregorian-style prayers in the voice of Amazon’s Kendra.

Read more