ETH teaches a commercial robot hand to crawl and press keys
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a method to teach a commercial robotic hand to crawl and perform precise tasks like pressing keys. By using reinforcement learning, the hand can navigate various terrains and operate without an arm.
Why it matters
This advancement in soft robotics could enable robots to access confined spaces that are currently unreachable for larger, full-bodied machines.
ETH Zurich taught a commercial robotic hand to crawl and press keys. The work points toward robots that could send individual parts into tight spaces.
ETH Zurich researchers taught a commercial robotic hand to crawl on its five fingers, balance and press keyboard arrow keys without an arm attached.
The project, featured in The Rundown’s October 1 coverage , comes from ETH’s Soft Robotics Lab. In a September 15 preprint , the team describes adding a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, motion sensor and battery to a WUJI right hand. The resulting robot weighs 818 grams, about 1.8 pounds.
The WUJI hand has 20 powered joints. Researchers trained separate controllers through reinforcement learning in simulation to coordinate its uneven fingers and offset thumb. They set reference positions for each finger and let the controller learn the timing and motion, according to the project description .
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