Aaron Dollar, an assistant professor of
mechanical engineering at Yale, has invented a robot with a soft touch.
His plastic hand is deft enough to grasp a wide variety of objects
without damaging them. What's more, it's cheaper and requires less
processing power than the metal hands typically used in robots. Dollar's design uses plastic fingers that can lightly brush against
an object--whether it's a wine glass, beach ball, or telephone--before
firming up their grip. Few researchers have used soft plastic in
robotics before, partly because it can be difficult to shape small,
precise parts out of such materials. To get around this problem, Dollar
mills wax molds for each finger. He places sensors and cables in the
molds and then pours in layers of three types of plastic with varying
degrees of softness--for fingers, joints, and finger pads. Once the
plastics harden and are removed from the molds, the fingers are ready to
be hooked up to a base. Dollar's design has already been licensed to
one robotics manufacturer, and because it replicates the flexibility and
gentleness of a human hand, he is investigating whether it could work
as a prosthetic.--Kristina Grifantini
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