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The human hand is an evolutionary marvel, with 27 degrees of freedom and unmatched touch sensitivity. But the same aspects that make our hands so useful are also what make robotic reproduction an utter nightmare.That’s why one research team abandoned human-derived gripper designs Agree with Woodlice.
At least they’re not the dried-out, re-inflated tarantula carcasses Rice University researchers created in 2022. These manipulators were a new proof-of-concept in that they harnessed the natural mechanisms that spiders use for locomotion. The limbs are moved by a combination of hydraulic pressure and flexor muscles, rather than the antagonistic pairs of mammals. However, this system only really works while the corpse is held together.
A new system designed by Dr. Josephine Garipon Her team at Tohoku University in Japan builds on previous work with “necrotic” spiders, but still relies on living insects. “To our knowledge, there is no precedent for the use of whole living organisms as end-effectors for the robotic arms we propose here,” Garipon notes. Organisms as end effectors. The researchers are using both captive woodlice (a.k.a. lowry pollies) and captive chitons (small marine mollusks) to serve as temporary robotic hands.
They first 3D printed a small seat for the animal to sit on at the end of the robot’s manipulator arm, then tasked woodlice and chitons with picking up cotton tufts and water-soaked cork tufts, respectively. The results were almost as promising as expected. The woodlice fooled around with the cotton for about two minutes before losing interest, while the kitten had to grab the prize and aggressively pull it away from the cotton. Still, given the existing difficulties of using suction cups and similar mechanical methods in water, the fact that the chiton gained any bit of grip was promising. Indeed, much more work needs to be completed before these early concepts can be applied to functional and efficient robotic systems.
The team’s research also raises ethical questions about the welfare of experimental animals, such as whether they are forced to perform against their will and how they are motivated to do so. . “We want to establish a kind of cooperative interaction, especially for sentient animals,” Garipon said. new syntist. “It’s a little different than domestication, but it’s just cooperation that allows animals to live their lives for the day.” To be fair, it’s certainly less invasive than domestication. your average cyborg cockroach research.
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