A robotic hand that walks away on its own fingertips

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Researchers at ETH Zurich’s Soft Robotics Lab have taught an off the shelf anthropomorphic hand to walk on its own fingertips, no arm and no separate legs or wheels involved.

A robotic hand that gets up and walks away on its fingertips. Thing from The Addams Family, for real.

This is Fingers as Legs, from ETH Zurich’s Soft Robotics Lab. An off the shelf hand, 818 grams, with a Raspberry Pi, an IMU and a battery on its back.

Every finger it lifts is one less point of support, and no two are the same length. Reinforcement learning worked out who steps, and when.

It crawled 14 surfaces, hardwood to gravel, and got itself back up after 21 falls out of 25.

Then, holding its own weight, it pressed 29 of 32 arrow keys with no vision.

It also drifts right when nobody steers. The team calls that a limitation.

3 days ago

AI and Robotics

A robotic hand that walks away on its own fingertips

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