Hand: open-source Robot Hand(github.com) |
Hand: open-source Robot Hand(github.com) |
What a time to be alive!
The parts list has "need to be strong" for many of the small parts, but they are 3D printed PLA plastic. That's the low end of 3D printing. None of the videos show the hand handling anything.
So this is really the proof of concept model. If there's enough interest, someone could make the parts by injection-molding of something better, such as polycarbonate or glass-filled nylon. The total plastic volume here is so tiny that the plastic cost is negligible, and there's no reason not to use a high-quality engineering plastic.
Nobody seems to do hobbyist injection molding much. TechShop had a desktop injection molding machine, the CNC milling machines to make molds, and even Autodesk Moldflow to design them. But nobody used those tools. A few university maker spaces have similar machines. Because most of the world's plastic stuff is made by injection molding.
[1] https://www.feetechrc.com/
In other words, we're not really there yet to bring that activity into the hobby realm. But I hope that we're not too far away.
If this Robot hand can do those jobs we could see some industries take a hit
Industrial needs care not about weight, care less about cost, and care a great deal about capability, repeatability, and reliability.
This is a cool project for a hobbyist but it's not meant to be a serious industrial machine.
Edit: what is with this thread? Lots of very generic positive comments here but not much thinking about what this is actually useful for.
That is why I'm self employed.
Thus, similarly for the garage, the DIY table, etc. Just Arms would be good.
I have to put a towel over it though today he pulled the towel off and still grabbed the knife and was holding it up when I turned around.
But arms to move laundry from dirty clothes -> washer -> dryer -> clean clothes basket? Relatively defined, repeatable interactions with a worst case of wrecking some clothes seems a safer place to start.
Seriously, though. Vassar Robotics (YC company) has an arm kit available for order now. The original ship date for my order just got pushed back due to an upgrade in the camera spec.
It won't be able to hold knives (I don't think) but there are companies working to bring about your hoped-for wall arm right now.
I wonder if companies are experimenting with materials like UHMWPE for non-elastic, high strength-to-diameter tendons.
I dont know if you'd have to weld the dyneema to the anchor points, though
https://www.youtube.com/@WillCogley
https://willcogley.notion.site/
So, there are designs out there for that too!
Last I checked, project was shelved in 2020 for various reasons. =3
They probably want to know relatively important information like
- Breaking force (how much force will break a finger)
- grip force (How much force can the fingers exert to hold an object once closed)
- holding force (combination of grip force and material properties [ex - friction] that gives you an idea how much force can be applied to prevent slipping)
- closing force (How much force is exerted during closing [similar but distinct from grip/holding])
Or, with a lot less specific detail but still generally useful as a starting point...
- payload capacity (approximately how much can this safely manipulate)
But... is a human hand the best design for a robot to grip things with? Or could we surmise that the human hand evolved as a pretty good hand given the materials and senses that were available to evolve humans from, while in theory a totally different design might be optimal for gripping when constructed from metal, plastic, motors, etc.?
I actually saw this posted a few days back on Twitter and had been wondering if there was any deeper consideration for the number of fingers. It seems like you save around $10 in parts by getting rid of a finger, based on the information in the BOM.
This 4-finger hand is just below 4 inches wide, across the knuckles. By the standards of gloves for humans, this is already "X-Large"
The SCS0009 servos are 1/2in wide and there are two for each finger. Adding two more servos would make it 5 inches wide, taking it into "XXX-Large" territory.
feels like a cool project/toy
For any one specific thing, be it a doorknob, a rope, a sheet of paper or fabric, or a pair of scissors, there's probably a different design that's several orders of magnitude simpler and cheaper, and also much stronger and more reliable. Single-axis parallel grippers, circumferential chucks, vacuum cups/vacuum pads, electromagnets, cam lock and release mechanisms, and so on are common in industrial robotics.
Assume your robot's only task is to grab a spool with a 35 +/-0.5 mm ID core from from an infeed rack and place it on a spindle, you're not going to try to build a five-finger human sized servo-operated hand and tuck two of those fingers away to awkwardly pinch outwards from the inside, you're going to grab a Schunk JGZ concentric gripper off the shelf and plumb a pair of air lines to it. If it also needs to grab a tab from some tape on the spool and pull it into the machine, you're just going to add an asymmetric pincer like an angular tumor on two of the jaws - or graft on an entire separate parallel gripper like some polydactyl appendage, or tool-change, amputating and reattaching hands at will.
I have also observed that humans are quite good at anthropomorphizing robot arms: a small, well-tuned motion can be universally recognized as a nod of agreement, shrug of confusion, wave of acknowledgement, or sigh of disappointment, even if the equipment is a bright yellow 6-axis piece of cast iron with menacing claws where the hand (or face? they're often the same) should be. Googley eyes and a "Hi my name is" sticker make this even more convincing.
But if you need a single tool to grip a doorknob, a rope, a sheet of paper, a pair of scissors, AND an unknown variety of other arbitrary household objects... it's probably best to start with an approximation of the human hand. Also, while claws may be appropriate for a work environment with the robot inside a fence, in collaborative situations hands are just less intimidating.
Also, if you’re designing a robot gripper for any one specific thing, it’s quite possible that you can tweak the design of that specific thing to make the task easier. As an extreme example, screws and screw drivers evolve in parallel.
Seems like a pretty high bang-for-the-buck for versatility and capability with only a few cables controlling it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-use-dea...
How long until human hands are put on robotics??
I think the ethical approach is to build for human capabilities and limitations. We have already seen what happens when we allow business to optimize for the lowest common denominator, and that is why we have regulations that emphasize accessibility. If we allow or encourage businesses to build robots that lack human capabilities and limitations that operate in the real world alongside humans, then even if those robots are assistive in nature (either a prosthetic robot hand, or a full blown humanoid robotic assistant), we will displace or redefine what humans are capable of, and diminish the role of and respect for human beings in our society.
If anything, the human world is built for humans, so a lot of existing things are naturally compatible with human hands. Also, take into account flexibility. It might not be the best for one job, but it's really okay at a lot of jobs.
If you can limit the scope of things to be gripped, e.g. a sheet of paper, a baby chicken or a 100x100mm square steel girder then no doubt there is a better design out there.
A hand however, is useful because so many manufactured objects have been constructed for their purpose.
The ability to negotiate stairs is table stakes for a household robot. It's already a pain when one's Roomba-like is defeated by a small ledge...
Totally fixable problem. Then this hand can go to work.
If this thing catches on, someone might sell an upgrade kit with stronger parts. The designer is already considering a servo upgrade.
[1] https://github.com/pollen-robotics/AmazingHand/blob/main/ass...
This sort of thing is probably about $40,000 for the first part, $0.05 for each additional part. Designing and making the custom dies is expensive. Banging out the parts is cheap. Mass production works.
A lot of problems in robotics reduce down to continual learning. Essentially all system identification tasks become obsolete the moment you have a self learning system and yet we have an AI industry preaching that AGI is around the corner without this "crutch".
Another idea is to use an external camera or two and to track the fingers with a deep learning model. But this can become messy if other objects are in view. And it might also introduce more control delay in the feedback loop than a simple sensor.
How can you say that when the person you are responding to is talking about what this is actually useful for?
What you're missing is: today, we're nearing the point where actual general purpose robots become viable.
Which means: the purpose of a robot is no longer to sit at a factory line and precisely execute the same exact motions on repeat 24/7. The purpose of the next generation of robots is to learn generalized behaviors, adapt to circumstances, and carry out circumstance-specific actions with active sensor feedback. Which means completely different requirements for effectors.
Which means: repeatability can go get fucked, for one.
Humanoid robotics research was pretty popular in the early 2000s already, with remarkable, reproducible results not only in videos. It’s definitively more present in the media now.
We've been in a continuous AI breakthrough since 2022. In 2000, this kind of thing was nonexistent.
