The Southampton Remedi-Hand

Gotta love auto-manual manipulation with a sense of humor. The University of Southampton wasn't satisfied that their Remedi-Hand robot meat hook is supposedly more dexterous and advanced than any other elsewhere, what with its 400g weight (that's lighter than a normal human hand) and five independently actuated digits. No, they had to pose it with a can of beans—healthy beans, no less.

[Thanks, Ray]

[Lindsey @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

That's funny I don't care who you are!

[freshsci @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

I still like the NASA hand more: http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/062800/NASA_Robot_Hand_062800.html
It matches my ipod nano..

[Spencer @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

Where is the robot foot?

I love the sound of metal foot on human skull

[Chris Webster @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

This one is really nice too:

http://www.shadow.org.uk/products/newhand.shtml

[CB @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

I've always wondered why we cant just attach an artificial hand to the end of the bone,and use the remaining muscles and tendons in the arms to operate mechanical fingers, obviously a major obstacle would be a germ barrier for the bits to pass through, but surely it could be done somehow, the hand is mostly operated by muscles in the arms, and you would keep full control just like your real hand.

[Gil @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

because cut muscles barely work and we haven't broken the "code" the brain uses to comunicate to the body

[abigsmurf @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

We can actually sense the eletrical signals the arm sends to the hand. However calibrating a robotic hand to move in accordance with those signals is hard.

Hands are extremely complex things to emulate, the have to do very fast movement and be able to grip fairly strong yet they also can't crush everything they try to grab. Not only that, they have to have low power requirements and be tough enough for everyday use.

[Martin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

Quote #4: "I've always wondered why we cant just attach an artificial hand to the end of the bone,and use the remaining muscles and tendons in the arms to operate mechanical fingers"

The research on this is still far away from rebuilding actual robotic limbs that react to the same as a real hand. But professor Kevin Warwick has done this and has managed to use the electrical signals from his own arm to control a robot arm the other side of the world over the Internet. He's even managed to have the robot feed signals back up the arm to allow him to sense presure on the robot arm.

For more information...
http://www.kevinwarwick.org/

[Shig @ Dec 19th 2005 1:06AM]

Not just any old healthy beans--these are HP healthy beans. Guess they've decided to really start diversifying, after losing the iPod and all.