YouTube user [onefivefour] posted a video of his hacked up toy robot hand. These cheap robot hands usually only use one wire to move all five fingers. [onefivefour] improved upon the design and added five servos to allow independent control of each digit.
The servos are controlled by a PICAXE microcontroller, and [onefivefour] is willing to share the code. A few pressure sensors in the fingertips would turn this build into a great test bed for future development. It would also be great for an [Anakin Skywalker] Halloween costume if anyone on the planet ever wanted that specific costume.
[onefivefour] says he only spent $6 on his and while there’s more money sunk into the servos, it was probably a good investment. We love seeing hacked up pieces of plastic like the fully functional Wall-E or the dancing Androids. If you’ve got a toy hack in the works, drop us a line on our tip form.
I wonder what the grip is like on this hand , is it able to pick up items or are the fingers not strong enough ?
It can’t pick up a full drink, but screwdrivers, rubber balls, objects under a pound or so are not a problem.
Useful for robots and injured Jedis!!!
Nice job on the hack-simple and good :)
Maybe I can work on an “auto-petter” that will keep our cat happy lol.
Thanks for the info, too!
Way to get the comments fixed HaD! I felt like an old man the other day deleting off screen and having text-wrap issues lol. Much better!
Good to see there is still interest in human like robotics. It’s a shame that it’s either really cheap (not that that’s bad at all) or really rediculously expensive (aka companies showing off cough*asimo*cough).
Ok full disclosure I’m trying to develop a robotic hand kit that will allow hackers to add their own modular electronics/sensors and motors to them. So in otherwords taking out the fiddly bits of constructing the structure of the hand, and letting people concentrate on what they’re more comfortable with. The site is http://anthromod.com/blog/
You see, you combine this with any other project that involves prosthetics you got the open-source mechanical arm that many of us wannabe cyborgs are hoping for.
This would be a great prosthetic for children with an handicap so they can train at an early age to handle an more advanced prosthetic later on.
silicone skin over it and the other kids will not even notice it thus improve the overall social life of such children.
i see only benefits other then human become more robot but that will happen eventually so why not now.
Neat hack, but too cheap (in design) to actually be useful.
I like how it’s “flipping the bird”
FWIW: I completed the build:
http://ijprojects.blogspot.com/2011/08/picaxe-18m2-robotic-hand-complete.html
but his interim step was more impressive:
http://ijprojects.blogspot.com/2011/08/robot-hand-mimics-real-life-hand.html