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Behold A Robot Hand With A Soft Touch
Using light-conductive materials, researchers have built a robot hand that can sense shapes and textures. Soft robotics holds promise for better prosthetics or machines with a more "human" touch.
www.npr.org

Robotics researchers at Cornell University made a hand that has something close to a human touch — it can not only touch delicate items but also sense the shape and texture of what it comes into contact with.

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Imagine a hand-shaped balloon, with light signals running through bendable so-called waveguides, pipes that carry waves, inside the fingers. When the hand touches something, the waveguides bend, distorting or changing the light signals. That change gives the robot data on whatever it is the hand is touching.

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Relying on light signals also means that robotic hands could be made with cheaper materials, which could lead to cheaper prosthetic hands that give the wearer a sense of touch, says Robert Shepherd, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell who co-authored the study.

Zhao estimates her soft robotic hand could be made for under $50 — even less with mass production, though you’d need more money to add a battery and a compressor tank, for the compressed air that controls the robotic fingers. Shepherd says it’s the cheapest product of its kind.

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me, at a job interview: I love wage labour, the alienation of the worker from their product, socioeconomic oppression and working my entire life away into dust! haha hire me