Robotics
Researchers working on the biomechanics of the human hand have created perhaps the most life-like version with their latest robotic attempt.
When it comes to human intelligence, it is very possible that along with our large neocortex, our hands may be a key ingredient. Now researchers at the University of Washington have produced an amazing new version of a robotic hand, by going back to the basics of the biology as a starting point.
Related articles
According to researchers Zhe Xu and Emanuel Todorov, a wide range of research areas, from telemanipulation in robotics to limb regeneration in tissue engineering, could benefit from an anthropomorphic robotic hand that mimics the characteristic features of the human hand.The researchers have worked on a series of robotic hands over the years, and for this latest version, they 3D scanned in actual hand bones from a human cadaver, and then 3D printed out the parts as a biologically-inspired scaffold for their device.
A key benefit of this approach resulted in an opposable thumb that very closely behaves as one on an actual hand. "The motion of our opposable thumb is relying the complicated shape of the trapezium bone located at the carpometacarpal (CMC) joint."
"We believe that the biomechanics of human hand is an essential component of the hand dexterity and can be replicated with highly biomimetic design."
"None of the existing anthropomorphic robotic hands can restore the natural thumb motions with conventional mechanical joints that require fixed rotation axes," Xu explains. "We 3D print artificial bones from the laser-scanned model of a cadaver skeleton hand and connect them with artificial finger joints whose range of motion, stiffness, and dynamic behaviors are very close to their human counterparts. Our robotic hand design uniquely preserves the important biomechanical information of the human hand on anatomical level.”The challenges of designing the robotic hand mainly resulted from our limited understanding of the human hand from engineering point of view and our ability to replicate the important biomechanical features with conventional mechanical design, claim Xu and Todorov.
"We believe that the biomechanics of human hand is an essential component of the hand dexterity and can be replicated with highly biomimetic design. To this end, we reinterpret the important biomechanical advantages of the human hand from roboticist’s perspective and design a biomimetic robotic hand that closely mimics its human counterpart with artificial joint capsules, crocheted ligaments and tendons, laser-cut extensor hood, and elastic pulley mechanisms," they write.
telemanipulation performance.
Also, due to the functional similarity between the robotic hand and an actual human hand, they intend to collaborate with researchers from biology and tissue engineering to further explore its potential to serve as a bio-fabricated device/scaffold in the emerging fields of neuroprosthetics and limb regeneration.
0 comments:
Post a Comment