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 fingers are sometimes thought of to be the top of dexterity, and plenty of robotic fingers are designed of their picture. However having been formed by the sluggish technique of evolution, human fingers 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 choosing up a chip can,” says Aude Billard, head of the Studying Algorithms and Techniques Laboratory (LASA) in EPFL’s Faculty of Engineering. “Likewise, accessing objects positioned behind the hand whereas protecting the grip steady may be extraordinarily difficult, requiring awkward wrist contortions or physique repositioning.”

A workforce 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 may assist as much as six an identical silicone-tipped fingers, fixes the issue of human asymmetry by permitting any mixture of fingers to kind opposing pairs in a thumb-like pinch. Because of 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 purposes – and past

Whereas the robotic hand appears 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 totally 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 could actually single-handedly sort out duties often requiring two human fingers – 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 could actually maintain; if we have to maintain extra objects, we merely add extra fingers,” Billard says.

The researchers foresee purposes of their revolutionary design in real-world settings that demand compactness, adaptability, and multi-modal interplay. For instance, the expertise could possibly be used to retrieve objects in confined environments or develop the attain of conventional industrial arms. And whereas the proposed robotic hand will not be itself anthropomorphic, additionally they consider it could possibly be tailored for prosthetic purposes.

“The symmetrical, reversible performance is especially beneficial in situations the place customers may benefit from capabilities past regular human operate,” Billard says. “For instance, earlier research with customers of extra robotic fingers display the mind’s exceptional adaptability to combine extra appendages, suggesting that our non-traditional configuration might 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).