ITK's Handroid: a softer, gentler robotic hand (video) -- Engadget
- Most robotic hands are built with a series of individual motors in each joint, making them heavy, expensive and prone to gripping everything with the subtlety of a vice. Japan's ITK thinks it's solved those problems with Handroid -- designed with cords that mimic the muscles in our meat-paws. No motors mean it's far lighter than the standard Terminator design, and it's controlled with a glove that allows it to mirror the operator's movement as it happens.
The “Multi-fingered Robot Hands”＜EMG prosthetic hand＞ -ITK
- The “Handroid” is a remotely-operable five-finger movable robot hand.It can be used in engineering environments which are inaccessible or dangerous to human hands. Most of the existing robot hands do not use all five fingers. Other Five-finger models usually have servomotors in each joint in the fingers, which makes the robot hand heavy, complicated and expensive.ITK developed the Handroid lightweight and cheap, restricting it to basic hand. However, the range of movement does not restrict the Handroid’s capabilities and it should be able to perform to the needs of its users.
Handroid: Japanese Company Shows Advanced Robot Hand (Video) | TechCrunch
- Operators can control each finger remotely (the Handroid can mimic the operator’s movements), for example in environments where it’s too dangerous to use human hands. At 740g, the Handroid is very light, prompting ITK to look into possibilities to develop a prosthetic hand that could be controlled by brain waves or cerebral nerves.
