Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed Fragile Object Grasping with Tactile Sensing (FORTE), a robotic hand that can pick up very fragile items without crushing them. The lead author of the new paper in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters is Siqi Shang, a doctoral student in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department.
The fingers use a fin-ray effect inspired by fish fins and are produced with advanced 3D-printing. They include internal empty air channels that act as tactile sensors. When the fingers close, the channels shift and change air pressure, which small off-the-shelf pressure sensors detect. This gives the robot real-time force feedback and helps it know if an object is slipping.
The team tested the grippers on 31 objects, including raspberries, potato chips, jam jars, billiard balls, soup cans and apples. In single-trial grasping experiments the system achieved a 91.9% success rate and recognized 93% of slips with 100% precision. The researchers released designs and algorithms publicly and said FORTE outperformed grippers that use only visual feedback.
Difficult words
- fragile — easy to break or damage by pressure
- tactile — related to touch or the sense of touch
- grasp — to take and hold something with a handgrasping
- sensor — a device that detects physical informationsensors
- fin-ray — a flexible structure inspired by fish fins
- channel — a narrow empty path inside a materialchannels
- feedback — information sent back to control a process
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Discussion questions
- Would you trust a robot like FORTE to pick fragile food at home? Why or why not?
- Which fragile household items would you want a robot to handle for you?
- How could real-time force feedback help other kinds of robots in daily life?
