A Highly Dexterous Robot Hand

Researchers at Columbia Engineering developed a highly dexterous robot hand that combines an advanced sense of touch with motor learning algorithms to achieve a high level of dexterity. As a demonstration, the team chose a difficult manipulation task: executing an arbitrarily large rotation of an unevenly shaped grasped object in hand while always maintaining the object in a stable, secure hold. Watch this video to see the results.

“While our demonstration was on a proof-of-concept task, meant to illustrate the capabilities of the hand, we believe that this level of dexterity will open up entirely new applications for robotic manipulation in the real world,” said Matei Ciocarlie , associate professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. “Some of the more immediate uses might be in logistics and material handling, helping ease up supply chain problems like the ones that have plagued our economy in recent years, and in advanced manufacturing and assembly in factories.”