WIRED MAGAZINE -- Getting a Grip

Building the Ultimate Robotic Hand


A 6-foot-tall, one-armed robot named Stair 1.0 balances on a modified Segway platform in the doorway of a Stanford University conference room. It has an arm, cameras and laser scanners for eyes, and a tangle of electrical intestines stuffed into its base.
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To do real work in our offices and homes, to fetch our staplers or clean up our rooms, robots are going to have to master their hands. They'll need the kind of "hand-eye" coordination that enables them to identify targets, guide their mechanical mitts toward them, and then manipulate the objects deftly.
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But the next generation, Stair 2.0, will actually analyze its own actions. The next Stair will look for the object in its hand and measure the force its fingers are applying to determine whether it's holding anything. It will plan an action, execute it, and observe the result, completing a feedback loop. And it will keep going through the loop until it succeeds at its task.
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