Hasta La Gadget!

Should you ever find yourself needing to discuss the state of the robotic hand in the early 21st century, Harvard professor Robert Howe seems about as good a place to start as any. The professor founded the school’s BioRobotics Laboratory in 1990 and has devoted a good deal of his time to the quest for perfect robot extremities. The last few years have seen a number of breakthroughs for Howe and his team including, notably, the SDM (Shape Deposit Manufacturing) hand, an adaptable and rugged robot gripper that utilizes a single motor to manipulate its eight joints. Such machines have, in the past, often relied on precise image sensing to determine the exact size and shape of an object, in order to configure their digits perfectly before attempting to pick it up. The SDM hand is a lot more forgiving. The pulley system at play distributes equal tension to the fingers in an adaptive transmission that allows motion to continue in other fingers, should one’s movement be hampered.

The joints themselves are extremely compliant as well, adapting and conforming to the shape of an object, thanks in part to their ability to pivot in three dimensions. The Shape Deposit Manufacturing technology used to create the fingers, meanwhile, adds an important level of durability, letting Howe bang them against a table (a trick he happily performed for us) and expose them to water — both features that are quite often absent in more complex (and far more expensive) models. The SDM technology, developed at Stanford, allows for the creation of fingers that are a single piece, with their parts embedded in plastic. The larger model shown off by Howe serves as great visual when describing the benefits of the single motor system, but the team has also developed a smaller version, with the requisite motors embedded in a far more compact chassis, which we also got a peek at.

The hand will likely be targeted at home and office use, with some key applications for assisting the disabled. Check out a video of Howe describing the technology to us during our visit to the school and a clip of the SDM doing its thing in the labs, which should help feed your desire to watch robot hands get banged by hammers.

Continue reading Rethinking the robot hand at Harvard (video)

Filed under: Robots

Rethinking the robot hand at Harvard (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Aug 2012 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s a whole sea of jellyfish out there ready to sting indiscriminately. So, why do we keep trying to make them? Scientists from Harvard and Caltech have a pretty good reason for creating fake jellies — they hope to mend broken hearts by adapting their ‘pumping’ style of movement. Much like our own vital organ, the creatures are a mass of muscle adept at shifting fluid, meaning the research has several medical applications, such as bioengineered pacemakers for busted tickers. In creating the Medusoids, the team used a silicon scaffold coated in functional rat cardiac tissue, copying the muscle layout of a real jellyfish as best they could. When immersed in salt water and treated to bursts of current, the cells contract and cause the silicon sheet to move in a way eerily similar to the real thing. Next step for the team? An autonomous version that can move and potentially feed without their influence, of course. And, after seeing the little swimmers in action, we’ve certainly got palpitations. See what we mean after the break.

Continue reading Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video)

Filed under: Science

Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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