Robotic hand can identify objects with just one grasp

MIT researchers developed a soft-rigid robotic finger that incorporates powerful sensors along its entire length, enabling them to produce a robotic hand that could accurately identify objects after only one grasp. Credits : Image: Courtesy of the researchers The three-fingered robotic gripper can "feel" with great sensitivity along the full length of each finger - not just at the tips. Previous image Inspired by the human finger, MIT researchers have developed a robotic hand that uses high-resolution touch sensing to accurately identify an object after grasping it just one time. Many robotic hands pack all their powerful sensors into the fingertips, so an object must be in full contact with those fingertips to be identified, which can take multiple grasps. Other designs use lower-resolution sensors spread along the entire finger, but these don't capture as much detail, so multiple regrasps are often required. Instead, the MIT team built a robotic finger with a rigid skeleton encased in a soft outer layer that has multiple high-resolution sensors incorporated under its transparent "skin." The sensors, which use a camera and LEDs to gather visual information about an object's shape, provide continuous sensing along the finger's entire length. Each finger captures rich data on many parts of an object simultaneously.