Lord Have Mercy as Researchers Create Walking Disembodied Hand Like That Little Guy From “The Addams Family”
What is this Thing? The post Lord Have Mercy as Researchers Create Walking Disembodied Hand Like That Little Guy From “The Addams Family” appeared first on Futurism .
A team of researchers at ETH Zurich's Soft Robotics Lab have assembled an autonomous, anthropomorphic robotic hand that can walk using its fingertips. This disembodied hand is capable of traversing various surfaces, including different indoor and outdoor terrains, despite its arachnid-like gait and twitchy movements. Researchers from the lab claim that such a hand could prove useful in confined spaces where it could operate without the need for the supporting arm to follow.
They trained the robotic hand using reinforcement learning software, which rewarded it for successfully completing tasks while maintaining its natural stance. To achieve self-sufficiency, the researchers added a battery, onboard computer, and sensors to the off-the-shelf human-like hand. The hand's limited mobility and unequal finger lengths presented a challenge, but the researchers overcame this by training the robot in a simulated environment.
The hand was able to perform tasks such as typing on a computer keyboard and playing the puzzle game Sokoban. While the creation of autonomous robotic hands may sound frightening, researchers assert that such technology could make future robots more versatile in a variety of spaces and interfaces designed for humans.
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