/ News
Soft robotic hand can hold on as CSAIL demonstrates
Soft robots are in focus at MIT. They are built from non-traditional materials like paper and synthetic fiber. Brooks Hays reported on their work for UPI on Wednesday.
Soft robots matter. If we are to enjoy potential applications for robots that can grasp, hold, and manipulate objects without dropping or crushing them, then the engineers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) potentially have much to contribute. At MIT, they are looking into, well, robots that can turn to the more delicate responsibility of handling eggs without dropping and smashing them.
Engineers at MIT's CSAIL have built a new robot that has a hand with three fingers, made out of silicone rubber. This is a robotic gripper with special sensors and it can estimate the size and shape of an object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items.
Adam Conner-Simons reported in MIT News on Wednesday that researchers have demonstrated the 3-D-printed robotic hand made out of silicone rubber, which can lift and handle objects as delicate as an egg and as thin as a compact disc.
"Just as impressively," he said, "its three fingers have special sensors that can estimate the size and shape of an object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items." A video shows the gripper holding items such as disk, cube, coffee cup, little soft, stuffed animal toy, and other objects. One can see success in holding various shapes, sizes and textures.
Robots are often limited in what they can do because of how hard it is to interact with objects of different sizes and materials," CSAIL Director Daniela Rus said. "Grasping is an important step in being able to do useful tasks; with this work we set out to develop both the soft hands and the supporting control and planning systems that make dynamic grasping possible."
At the core of their technology are their "bend sensors," said Conner-Simons.
"When the gripper hones in an object, the fingers send back location data based on their curvature. Using this data, the robot can pick up an unknown object and compare it to the existing clusters of data points that represent past objects."
With just three data points from a single grasp, algorithms distinguish between objects.
Bianca S. Homberg, Robert K. Katzschmann, Mehmet R. Dogar, and Daniela Rus, team members for the soft robotic hand, authored the paper, "Haptic Identification of Objects using a Modular Soft Robotic Gripper," where they discuss the hand and how it works.
The authors wrote that "With the integrated bend sensors – one data point from each of the three fingers– our robot is able to identify a set of canonical objects of different shape, size and compliance by grasping them. We do this by building a relation between objects and the configurations the soft hand takes while grasping them. Then, given an unidentified object from our training set, our robot grasps it and uses proprioception to identify it. Through experiments we show that our hand can successfully distinguish between objects up to the resolution limit of the proprioceptive sensors."
Researchers control the gripper via pistons, pushing pressurized air through the fingers. The pistons cause bubbles to expand in the fingers, spurring them to stretch and bend. The robotic hand can hold objects using "enveloping grasps," where the object is entirely contained within the gripper, and "pinch grasps," where the object is held by the tips of the fingers.
As for materials used, silicone rubber was chosen, and the MIT News report spelled out why. The fingers were made of silicone rubber because of it being "relatively stiff, but also flexible enough to expand with the pressure from the pistons. Meanwhile, the gripper's interface and exterior finger-molds are 3-D-printed, which means the system will work on virtually any robotic platform."
CSAIL is the largest research laboratory at MIT.
Explore further: Getting a grip on robotic grasp
Source: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-soft-robotic-csail.html
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
/ Follow us at:
/ Contact:
For additional information, partnerships and sponsorship, contact:
info@2045.com
Media requesting information and interviews, contact PR@2045.com
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Google
Twitter
Facebook
Я.ру
ВКонтакте
Mail.ru