Meet The Real-Life 'Thing': The Robotic Hand That Walks On Its Finger

ETC Zurich scientists picked up an existing Chinese technology and added a few things of their own to make the robotic hand useful.

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  • The robotic hand weighs 816 grams and can walk, pick itself up, and move objects independently
  • It aims to inspect or operate in spaces inaccessible to a robot's main body, per experts
  • The hand uses reinforcement learning and carries its power and computing hardware on its back

What happens if the crawling hand gets stuck?

Heidi Klum shocked the world by appearing in a giant severed hand costume at a Halloween event. A group of Swiss scientists seem to have taken a cue from her to unveil a robotic hand, much like the disembodied hand called 'Thing' from the creepy The Addams Family. The robotic hand is able to walk on its fingertips across a wide range of surfaces and terrains. It weighs 816 grams and can pick itself after a fall and push objects around.

But the question is: What real-life use does this creepy product have? According to Science Daily, the idea is to give robot's hand a way to work somewhere it's body can't go.

"A future robot could send its hand into a space its body cannot enter, to inspect something, operate a control or move an object, then retrieve it afterward," roboticist Robert Katzschmann told Science Alert.

The discovery has been posted as a preprint on arXiv and not yet peer reviewed.

In the future, a robot can detach this hand, let it crawl and inspect an area and retrieve it, said the team from ETH Zurich.

They built on an existing Chinese tech, adding battery, a small computer and a motion sensor to allow it to function the robotic hand independently.

But the simple movements of 'Thing' were hard to teach to the robot.

"The fingers have different lengths and a thumb off to one side, which makes walking awkward. They also have to keep the hand balanced while interacting with objects," lead researcher Amirhossein Kazemipour told Science Alert.

The researchers used reinforcement learning, which is similar to learning through trial and error in a simulation. The robotic hand carries its power and computing hardware on its back.

They tested the hand on a variety of surfaces, including grass, gravel, hardwood floors and stone. It was also taught to operate a keyboard by playing a video game.

The team is now working to teach the hand how to enter a confined space to do a job.

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