ACM TechNews

Trying to Give Robots a Human Touch

Seattle Post-Intelligencer (07/06/08) Paulson, Tom

University of Washington (UW) professor Yoky Matsuoka wants robots to function more like human beings. Her lab at UW is full of mechanical hands, fingers, and arm parts, but she knows that even a human's little finger is far more complex and flexible than today's robots. For example, she says a simple task such as using a needle to sew a ripped seam becomes increasingly complex as it requires the coordinated use of all the fingers, thumbs, palm, forearm, and a precise combination of moving the needle with the proper amount of force, velocity, and orientation. "We take these kinds of motions for granted, but looked at from an engineering and robotics perspective they are very complicated," Matsuoka says. She says the last quarter-century of attempts to build robots has largely ignored the wisdom of biology and arrogantly tried to engineer a better, mechanical version of humans. Matsuoka has taken a different approach that focuses on why humans evolved the way they did to build a mechanical hand based on biology. One discovery that Matsuoka and her team made was that the rough surface of the bones in the fingers was an essential development, rather than an unimportant side effect of bone development. When Matsuoka made the mechanical "bones" smooth, the routing cables, which serve as artificial tendons, stopped working, so the bones were made rough again. Matsuoka's work could lead to robotic devices that could benefit people with spinal cord injuries or other disabilities that limit the body's functions.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/369789_robotarm07.html?source=rss

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