Know about Robotic Dexterity

When getting a robot, everyone always wants the one that is strong, and one that will be able to complete as many tasks as possible. In short some people will always look at the dexterity of the robot. This is basically the robots ability to complete functions in the same way or close to the same way that human hands would.

Measuring dexterity

There is no definite way to measure the dexterity of a robot yet, so it is not really possible to tell just how much dexterity your robot has, as this is an area that still happens to be growing. Even scientists are still working on this aspect of the robot, where the robot can do so much more with its arms than just pick up and drop, much like the industrial robot arm.

Challenges faced

Even though the humanoid was created with hands a really long time ago, getting those hands to actually work towards manipulating objects has been a whole other ball game. This is unlike other challenges such as the locomotion of a robot. Dexterous manipulation has been a rather slow development, and in as much as it has been successful, scientists admit that they still have quite a long way to go in terms of mastering that art in the world of robotics.

Some of the main challenges in trying to reorient an object in a robots hand remain to be unsolved and they include;

• Getting the robot to deal with more than just one object at a time.
• The high dimensional control which involves 24 degrees as compared to the typical robot arms 7 degrees of freedom.
• Getting it to work realistically in the real world.
• Getting the robot to work in environments that are noisy and distractive, even though it may interfere with their sensors in terms or delayed readings.

Dealing with the challenges

One of the ways in which these problems has been dealt with is by using a learning robot which can learn as time goes by without the help of human input. However training robots on dexterity also has its own challenges because most of the problems that are faced in manipulation cannot be modelled with enough accuracy in order for the learnt moves to be transferred to real robots. This is because it is one thing for a problem to be presented to a robot just to make it learn how to handle it, and it is yet another thing for a problem to present itself to a robot.

Amount of dexterity needed

The question of how much dexterity would one really need in their robot may arise. Even though there is no standard way of measurement, there are other factors that will contribute to the robots dexterity, and this will require a person to be able to narrow down the needs that their task will require. They include:

1. The shape of the object that needs manipulating.

The shape of the object is a really important contributing factor as it affects exactly how the robot will maneuver around it. For instance does the shape of the object involve complex curves and edges, or does it have a more simple geometric shape? Is it in a pyramid or spherical shape, and does it provide the robot with difficulty to grasp?

2. The size of the object

This is also very important because the object might be too small or too big and this may provide a challenge to the robot being able to manipulate it. The reach that is required of the robot contributes a lot to what sizes the robot can be able to manipulate.

3. Gripping strategy

This involves the different ways in which the robot can be grasped by the robot arm, and they involve either an internal grip, an encompassing grip or suction. So the grip method will depend on what the object requires.

4. Reachability

This just means the extent to which the robot is required to stretch in order to reach to the objects, and this will also contribute to the robots work space.

Rahul is a renowned author and social media enthusiast.