Shadow’s Dexterous Hand

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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Hackaday Links

Links

pardon the links being later in the day, but i was up till 5:30am brainstorming with jason over ideas and working on the next podcast (you’ll love it). tomorrow on lazy afternoons i’ll be posting about the next podcast, how you can get involved, etc.

Also, wanna leave us a voicemail? Maybe get it on the air? Got a question or comment?
Call us! 206-888-HACK

Also: Stop sending e-mails saying “not a hack, but this is really funny!” etc. the only thing you’re doing aside from wasting our time is giving us fodder for the podcast. you will be targeted. you will be subject to jokes….don’t say we didn’t warn you. we don’t mind things related to technology or hacking! go ahead and send those in…i just don’t need to know that costco is selling caskets on the cheap

Now onto those fresh links I always seem to have!

parallel port controller goodness [carpespasm]
some of you wanted to know how you can whip up a ddr pad to a pc to use for a controller? simple. just buy this attatchment. my friend has it and it works perfectly in both os x and windows.
the $1 laser light show! wicked! [ahanda]
people at microsoft think we should write down our passwords
netcraft now has a firefox toolbar. netcraft = must for hacking

and last and certainly not the least (this will leave you speechless):
the talking cybernetic sausage
(my hero)

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