Reversible, removable robotic hand redefines dexterity

2025 LASA/CREATE/EPFL CC BY SA.

By Celia Luterbacher

With its opposable thumb, a number of joints and gripping pores and skin, human palms are sometimes thought-about to be the top of dexterity, and plenty of robotic palms are designed of their picture. However having been formed by the gradual means of evolution, human palms are removed from optimized, with the largest drawbacks together with our single, asymmetrical thumbs and attachment to arms with restricted mobility.

“We are able to simply see the restrictions of the human hand when making an attempt to achieve objects beneath furnishings or behind cabinets, or performing simultaneous duties like holding a bottle whereas selecting up a chip can,” says Aude Billard, head of the Studying Algorithms and Programs Laboratory (LASA) in EPFL’s College of Engineering. “Likewise, accessing objects positioned behind the hand whereas retaining the grip secure may be extraordinarily difficult, requiring awkward wrist contortions or physique repositioning.”

A crew composed of Billard, LASA researcher Xiao Gao, and Kai Junge and Josie Hughes from the Computational Robotic Design and Fabrication Lab designed a robotic hand that overcomes these challenges. Their machine, which might assist as much as six an identical silicone-tipped fingers, fixes the issue of human asymmetry by permitting any mixture of fingers to type opposing pairs in a thumb-like pinch. Due to its reversible design, the ‘again’ and ‘palm’ of the robotic hand are interchangeable. The hand may even detach from its robotic arm and ‘crawl’, spider-like, to understand and carry objects past the arm’s attain.

“Our machine reliably and seamlessly performs ‘loco manipulation’ — stationary manipulation mixed with autonomous mobility – which we consider has nice potential for industrial, service, and exploratory robotics,” Billard summarizes. The analysis has been revealed in Nature Communications.

Human functions – and past

Whereas the robotic hand seems to be like one thing from a futuristic sci-fi film, the researchers say they drew inspiration from nature.

“Many organisms have developed versatile limbs that seamlessly change between completely different functionalities like greedy and locomotion. For instance, the octopus makes use of its versatile arms each to crawl throughout the seafloor and open shells, whereas within the insect world, the praying mantis use specialised limbs for locomotion and prey seize,” Billard says.

Certainly, the EPFL robotic can crawl whereas sustaining a grip on a number of objects, holding them below its ‘palm’, on its ‘again’, or each. With 5 fingers, the machine can replicate many of the conventional human grasps. When geared up with greater than 5 fingers, it might probably single-handedly deal with duties often requiring two human palms – similar to unscrewing the cap on a big bottle or driving a screw right into a block of wooden with a screwdriver.

“There is no such thing as a actual limitation within the variety of objects it might probably maintain; if we have to maintain extra objects, we merely add extra fingers,” Billard says.

The researchers foresee functions of their progressive design in real-world settings that demand compactness, adaptability, and multi-modal interplay. For instance, the expertise may very well be used to retrieve objects in confined environments or broaden the attain of conventional industrial arms. And whereas the proposed robotic hand is just not itself anthropomorphic, additionally they consider it may very well be tailored for prosthetic functions.

“The symmetrical, reversible performance is especially invaluable in eventualities the place customers may gain advantage from capabilities past regular human perform,” Billard says. “For instance, earlier research with customers of extra robotic fingers exhibit the mind’s outstanding adaptability to combine extra appendages, suggesting that our non-traditional configuration may even serve in specialised environments requiring augmented manipulation talents.”

Reference

A removable crawling robotic hand, Xiao Gao (高霄), Kunpeng Yao (姚坤鹏), Kai Junge, Josie Hughes & Aude Billard, Nat Commun 17, 428 (2026).