- The Neo Beta robot’s hands have human-level dexterity
- They use tendon-like controls instead of manual motors.
- They are waterproof and can perform many skills normally reserved for the human hand.
Neo’s new robotic hands are so cool and realistic that you might assume they’re gloved human hands and then wonder why someone is hitting them with a hammer.
In a new demo video recently posted to YouTube by 1X, the parent company of the Neo Beta robot, you can watch a pair of Neo Hands screw in a light bulb and pull the chain switch (before someone inexplicably smashes the bulb with a hammer), pluck grapes from a bunch and drop each one into a container, carefully pick up a screw, unbutton a jacket (a little creepy), and even open a small bag of Funyuns onion ring snacks.
In that last part, someone hits their hands with a hammer while they work, to which they pay no attention, before the bag is opened.
He even expertly builds a small stack of Lego. Okay, okay, they’re the larger Duplo blocks, but they still do as good a job as your average kindergartener.
The hands move slowly but also with a grace and ease that you could mistake for humanity. This appears to be due to the underlying technology.
As 1X described it, the rubberized, waterproof hands use a “tendon-driven closed-loop system.” This means that 1X moves the motors or servos away from the hand and back along the arm, keeping the hand smaller and more flexible. Those motors are then connected to an intricate system of tendon-like connectors that are pulled and released to allow movement and manipulation of the robot’s hands. That style of control is more like our own hands, which, while they include muscles, are also filled with tendons that sit inside the forearm.
1X says that the fingers, palm and thumb have 25 degrees of freedom, but, as evidenced in the video, they can also extend too far back in an unnatural or certainly more than human way.
The robot’s hands also feature impressive strength: They lift a 20-pound dumbbell and then, with a single finger, bend a smaller pulley.
Naturally, the fingers include sensors so the hands and the robot know when it is grasping something and how much force should or should be applied. This is how the Neo robot’s hand avoids breaking that light bulb (unlike that hammer).
Next level grace
I know, last week we heard about a couple of robots performing gallbladder surgery on a pig. You’d think those humanoid hands must have been much more elegant. However, each of those robots simply grabbed a pair of laparoscopic controls so that the more precise control, where the cutting and suturing was done, occurred at the end of those devices. No robotic hand directly manipulated the scalpels.
While Neo’s robotic hands will be useful for all sorts of household tasks when the $20,000 Neo finally arrives in consumers’ homes (early adopters may be receiving them now), the hands are also useful for helping itself: In the video, a Neo Beta robot uses its hands to lift its MagSafe-style charging puck, which it carefully attaches to its robotic hip.
1X writes that these hands will provide new real-world training data for their robotic development, and one would assume this will ultimately make the Neo robots even better helpers, companions, and facilitators around the home (all those Funyuns).
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