Optical sensors bring light touch to robot hands

The team placed 14 strain sensors into each of the fingers, which mimic the skeletal structure of a human finger. Each digit has a 3D-printed plastic fingertip, middle node and base node connected by joints, all covered in a soft silicon rubber skin. It is hoped that the research could pave the way for robots to work alongside humans with greater autonomy.

“If you want robots to work autonomously and to react safely to unexpected forces in everyday environments, you need robotic hands that have more sensors than is typical today,” said Yong-Lae Park, assistant professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon.

“Human skin contains thousands of tactile sensory units only in the fingertip and a spider has hundreds of mechanoreceptors on each leg, but even a state-of-the-art humanoid such as NASA’s Robonaut has only 42 sensors in its hand and wrist.”