🤖 This very simple robotic hand outperforms the human hand

A robot performs several very different hand gestures using just two pneumatic controls.

The device aims to overcome a common limitation of robotic hands: each additional movement often requires a dedicated mechanism, motor, or control. Here, the same structure changes shape depending on how the air is directed. It can therefore produce several gestures without multiplying the actuators.

To understand the principle, we need to look at the mechanics before the electronics. A deformable structure is surrounded by a soft shell that guides its movements. Two air inlets alter the forces exerted on the assembly. Depending on the combination used, the robot’s hand therefore does not always bend in the same direction.

This architecture can notably pinch a small object, grasp it more broadly, hook onto it, or produce a rotational movement. These gestures would normally require several independent joints in a conventional mechanical hand. Here, the prototype achieves this variety through its own geometry and the deformations of the material.

In other words, part of the control is directly embedded in the robot’s body. The software does not need to control a long series of joints separately to achieve each posture. This approach belongs to so-called “soft” robotics, in which materials deform to provide part of the movement and adaptation.

Its device surpasses some of the geometric possibilities of our hand, because its structure can take shapes that human bones and joints do not allow.

In practical terms, this freedom could prove useful when the same robot has to manipulate objects of very different sizes or shapes. A machine could change its gesture without replacing its end effector. This could reduce the number of moving parts, the weight of the mechanism, and the number of controls required for certain operations.

The researchers are also considering this structure beyond a simple gripper. Its large deformation range makes it possible to study systems in which the same element would successively serve as a manipulator, part of a limb, or an interface with a tool. Future work will need to determine which real-world tasks benefit most from this versatility.