Shadow’s Dexterous Hand

posted May 24th 2005 9:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: robots hacks

shadow hand

The Shadow Robot Company is now offering its Dexterous Hand for public sale. The joints are powered by the company’s Air Muscles, usually in pairs to provide a variable grip. The Air Muscle is a rubber tube encased in a “Chinese finger trap” style plastic webbing. When the muscle is inflated with compressed air it contracts. This simple system results in a 400:1 power to weight ratio. The bundle of muscles required to operate the hand makes for a very large Popeye-esque forearm so we probably won’t be seeing anything humanoid based on this anytime soon. They have GPL’d control code available though so anybody that wants to start developing for this will probably have a pretty easy time. You still have to justify paying an “arm and a leg” for a hand. The site has some good movement videos for you to check out. Just don’t mimic the movements; there’s a reason robots can’t feel pain.

[via Future Feeder]

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Comments [10]

Reader Comments

i think this is pretty cool, reminds me of the minicooper robot: http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin/

Posted at 9:37 am on May 24th, 2005 by daniel collotte

I should point out that the mini-cooper bot was sadly only part of a marketing campagne:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Top_2004_Hoaxes/comments/1636/

Posted at 12:16 pm on May 24th, 2005 by peter

how does one go about finding how much this thing costs?

is it in the technical doc pdf? if so, could someone be so kind as to tell me how much? i currently don’t have adobe’s reader installed yet.

Posted at 12:18 pm on May 24th, 2005 by Matrox462

90,000 euros for basic model

Posted at 3:32 pm on May 24th, 2005 by Mark

Now I just need to figure out if I’m going to use it for remote surgical procedures or for assiting in viewing porn.

Posted at 4:11 pm on May 24th, 2005 by jimmys

the real trick here is the implementation of these innovative artificial muscles. what other sorts of stuff can hackers use that method of actuation? air solenoid valves aren’t necessarily cheap but I’ve been known to get my hands on older ones.

Posted at 5:44 pm on May 24th, 2005 by Billy the Impaler

Exactly how is this a hack?

This was made from scratch.

Posted at 6:08 pm on May 24th, 2005 by joebox

I saw a far more interesting and budget conscious implementation of this a few years back at Iternational Science Fair. It was a dexterous hand that mimiced the action of the user wearing a nintendo power glove. The guy that did it is a buddy of mine, I will see if he has some information about it kicking around on the net somewhere. Until then, cheers.

Posted at 7:51 pm on May 24th, 2005 by jerry

The hand is cool! I can tell someone has access
to a Machine shop and Molding Equipment.Im
jealous, Plastic and Resin molding is very
usefull.They should add some sensors in the
Finger tips to detect touch pressure,Texture
etc..

Posted at 5:25 am on May 25th, 2005 by Greenflame

What’s it good for? Handjobs?

Posted at 8:17 am on May 25th, 2005 by Sigg3.net