Get a Grip: Robotics Firms Struggle to Develop Hands

Made with wood, springs and rubber bands, Rich Walker remembers fondly the first robotic hand built by Shadow Robot in the late 1990s.

"A lot of it was done with just stuff that we had," says Walker, now a company director.

I'm in Shadow Robot's north London headquarters, looking at their latest robotic hands.

Cylindrical "forearms" house small electric motors, known as actuators, which pull on metal tendons that move the fingers with precision.

To use the robotic hands, sensors are strapped to my fingers and I'm given a few simple instructions.

As a beginner, I expected the arms and hands to flail around, knocking the blocks and cups around the room.

But the movements are smooth and precise, and straight away I was manipulating the blocks and cups.

Around 200 of these hands are in use, mostly by researchers at universities and tech firms.

"This is essentially a development kit for dexterity. You get this hardware, you explore what can be done in terms of dexterity, then that helps you work out what you want to build if you're going to build a bigger system, or a bigger project, or deploy something," explains Walker.

- Author: Ben Morris, BBC

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