Dexterity

Having an extra thumb on one hand may boost your manual dexterity, but wouldn't it be hard to learn to use? Not according to a new study, which found that the majority of a wide variety of people got the hang of the thing in just one minute.

A robotics company likely most famous for a demo of its dexterous robot hand at Amazon re:MARS with Jeff Bezos has now unveiled a new robust model designed for machine learning research, which was developed in collaboration with Google's DeepMind.

A collaboration working under the EU-funded DeTOP project has developed a new hand prosthesis that reads signals direct from an amputee's nerves and muscles via electrodes implanted in the patient's arm.

​Mimicking the complex movement of a human hand is not an easy task for roboticists. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have looked at simplifying the design of a robotic hand, and developed a piano-playing soft skeleton bot that rocks the keyboard.​

A team of computer scientists at the University of Washington has upped the dexterity stat of a five-fingered robotic hand that can ape human movements and learn to improve on its own.

The tying of shoelaces may not be the most difficult thing that most of us do each day, but that nonetheless hasn't stopped people from inventing no-tie shoelace systems. One of the latest, Shnap + Laces, has the user just snap the ends of their laces onto the tops of their shoes.

A common ailment among stroke patients and the aging, treating a degenerative sense of touch has proven a complex task. A stimulation glove designed to improve tactile perception through small electrical pulses could provide a wearable solution that's unimposing enough for everyday use.

Yaskawa Motoman displayed a remarkable robot blackjack dealer at Automate 2013.

The PossessedHand system uses non-invasive electrical stimulation of muscles in the forearm to control movement of joints in the hand.

The “W” Prize is offering US$200,000 for the first robot that can successfully complete a 10km (6.2 miles) obstacle course within 10,000 seconds.

Twendy-One is the latest robotic helper designed to support aging people in their daily activities.

The Ishikawa Komuro laboratory at the University of Tokyo put these amazing videos together to demonstrate the incredibly quick parallel processing they are achieving with a mix of visual and tactile sensory inputs. Astounding stuff.