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If you think about the human hand as a work of engineering, it is absolutely incredible. The level of fine motor control is extreme. It is responsive and precise. It has robust sensory feedback. It combines both rigid and soft components, so that it is able to grip and lift heavy objects and also cradle and manipulate soft or delicate objects. Trying to replicate this functionality with modern robotics have been challenging, to say the least. But engineers are making steady incremental progress.

I like to check it on how the technology is developing, especially when there appears to be a significant advance. There are two basic applications for robotic hands – for robots and for prosthetics for people who have lost their hand to disease or injury. For the latter we need not only advances in the robotics of the hand itself, but also in the brain-machine interface that controls the hand. Over the years we have seen improvements in this control, using implanted brain electrodes, scalp surface electrodes, and muscle electrodes.

We have also seen the incorporation of sensory feedback, which greatly enhances control. Without this feedback, users have to look at the limb they are trying to control. With sensory feedback, they don’t have to look at it, overall control is enhanced, and the robotic limb feels much more natural. Another recent addition to this technology has been the incorporation of AI, to enhance the learning of the system during training. The software that translates the electrical signals from the user into desired robotic movements is much faster and more accurate than without AI algorithms.

A team at Johns Hopkins is trying to take the robotic hand to the next level – A natural biomimetic prosthetic hand with neuromorphic tactile sensing for precise and compliant grasping. They are specifically trying to mimic a human hand, which is a good approach. Why second-guess millions of years of evolutionary tinkering? They call their system a “hybrid” robotic hand because it incorporates both rigid and soft components. Robotic hands with rigid parts can be strong, but have difficulty handling soft or delicate objects. Hands made of soft parts are good for soft objects, but tend to be weak. The hybrid approach makes sense, and mimics a human hand with internal bones covered in muscles and then soft skin. 

The other advance was to incorporate three independent layers of sensation. This also more closely mimics a human hand, which has both superficial and deep sensory receptors. This is necessary to distinguish what kind of object is being held, and to detect things like the object slipping in the grip. In humans, for example, one of the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, which can impair sensation to the first four fingers of the hands, is that people will drop objects they are holding. With diminished sensory feedback, they don’t maintain the muscle tone necessary to maintain their grip on the object.

Similarly, prosthetics benefit from sensory feedback to control how much pressure to apply to a held object. They have to grip tightly enough to keep it from slipping, but not so tight that they crush or break the object. This means that the robotic limb needs to be able to detect the weight and firmness of the object it is holding. Having different layers of sensation allows for this. The superficial layer detects touch, while the progressively deeper layers will be activated with increasing grip strength. AI is also used to help interpret these signals, which in turn stimulate the users nerves to provide them with natural-feeling sensory feedback.

They report:

“Our innovative design capitalizes on the strengths of both soft and rigid robots, enabling the hybrid robotic hand to compliantly grasp numerous everyday objects of varying surface textures, weight, and compliance while differentiating them with 99.69% average classification accuracy. The hybrid robotic hand with multilayered tactile sensing achieved 98.38% average classification accuracy in a texture discrimination task, surpassing soft robotic and rigid prosthetic fingers. Controlled via electromyography, our transformative prosthetic hand allows individuals with upper-limb loss to grasp compliant objects with precise surface texture detection.”

Moving forward they plan to increase the number of sensory layers and to tweak the hybrid structure of soft and rigid components to more closely mimic a human hand. They also plan to incorporate more industrial-grade materials. The goal is to create a robotic prosthetic hand that can mimic the versatility and dexterity of a human hand, or at least come as close as possible.

Combined with advances in brain-machine interface technology and AI control, robotic prosthetic limb technology is rapidly progressing. It’s pretty exciting to watch.

The post Hybrid Bionic Hand first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A mission to survey the results of a deliberate crash between an asteroid and a NASA spacecraft has taken stunning images of Mars and its moon Deimos

Located on a mountaintop in Chile, the nearly complete Vera C. Rubin Observatory will capture the Universe in incredible detail. This week saw another huge step for the observatory with the installation of the car sized - yes car sized - LSST camera onto the Simonyi Survey Telescope. The camera is the largest ever built, weighing in at over 3,000 kilograms with an impressive 3,200 megapixels. Coupled to the 8.4 metre optics of the Rubin will allow it to capture everything that happens in the southern sky, night after night.

To reduce the growing risk of intense wildfires, California is cutting and burning the areas that fuel them – but these efforts may be moving too slowly

On March 11, the California skyline was once again treated to the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base. It carried two missions into space; SPHEREx to study the origins of the Universe and the molecular clouds of the Milky Way and four other satellites making up PUNCH. This latter mission is tasked with exploring how the Sun’s outer atmosphere causes the solar wind.

Electrolysis has been a mainstay of crewed mission designs for the outer solar system for decades. It is the most commonly used methodology to split oxygen from water, creating a necessary gas from a necessary liquid. However, electrolysis systems are bulky and power-intensive, so NASA has decided to look into alternative solutions. They supported a company called Precision Combustion, Inc (PCI) via their Institutes for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant to work on a system of thermo-photo-catalytic conversion that could dramatically outperform existing electrolysis reactors.

NASA’s Perseverance rover found large crystals of quartz with a high purity on Mars, which probably had to have formed in the presence of hot water

When Islamic Medicine Kills the Ayatollah!

The post Islamic Medicine and the Biopolitics of Antiscience in Iran first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have completed a survey of galaxies that reveals their rotation directions with unprecedented clarity. Contrary to expectations that galaxy rotations would be randomly distributed, they discovered a surprising pattern, that most galaxies appear to rotate in a similar direction! One hypothesis suggests the universe itself might have an overall rotation, researchers believe a more plausible explanation though is that Earth's motion through space creates an observational bias, making galaxies rotating in certain directions more detectable than others.

If you're a regular visitor to Universe Today, you've probably noticed that the website looks dramatically different. Simpler, cleaner, without all those pesky intrusive ads. We're in a new era, now. Here's what happened, why I decided to remove the ads from the site, and what you can expect going forward.

Up to 90% of abdominal surgeries result in adhesions -- abnormal scarring that ties together organs and tissues. A gel has now been shown to prevented adhesions in mice and pigs.

Scientists identify a new way to detect life in outer space with currently existing telescopes. The method hinges on worlds that look nothing like Earth, and gases rarely considered in the search for extraterrestrials.

Researchers elucidate the complex physical mechanisms and fluid dynamics involved in a handclap, with potential applications in bioacoustics and personal identification, whereby a handclap could be used to identify someone.

Researchers have published a new study that dives deep into nickel-based cathodes, one of the two electrodes that facilitate energy storage in batteries.

Scientists have developed an approach that combines rehabilitation robotics with spinal cord stimulation to restore movement in people with spinal cord injuries. The technology enhances rehabilitation and enables activities like cycling and walking outdoors.

Hydrocortisone and testosterone are just two of 13 drugs and supplements that could lessen the impact of genes that accelerate brain ageing

Noughts and crosses, or tic-tac-toe, is a simple game – but twist the rules and you can really spice it up, says Peter Rowlett

The odds are stacked against an all-female robotics team in Rule Breakers, a fantastic film about teaching girls in Afghanistan

In his Atomic series, artist James Stanford showcases "the spectacle and the horror" of growing up near a nuclear bomb testing site

Cosmic Titans, a new exhibition at the University of Nottingham, UK, is a powerful collaboration of artists and quantum physicists that sets out to make the intangible tangible