They are a difficult job to beat. Do you mean four fingers? There is an opposable thumb. A design that's been around a long time. Scientists still try to surpass what nature does. Their latest attempt to beat humanity is frightening.
The engineers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences didn't have a name for it. I'm going to call it because I want to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong. No effort was made to justify Mr. Jelly hands' choice.
The challenge of designing something that grabs as well as a human can is the subject of Mr. Jelly hands. The problem is not only that our hands are complex and expensive to duplicate in gears and levers, but that the software controlling them is incredibly well-tailored and capable of all sorts of dextrous movement.
Many roboticists avoid the challenge of replicating intelligence in software by designing hardware that embodies some of the same characteristics. They used deflatable balloons instead of robot hands. In this case, pneumatics. Mr. Jelly Hands doesn't have to have a specific smart brain. If you throw it in the general direction of the object you want to pick up, it will grab on as best as possible.
The Harvard engineers put it in a paper.
“Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception and motion planning. Here, we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array of fluidically actuated slender hollow elastomeric filaments to actively entangle with objects that vary in geometric and topological complexity.”
You throw it and see what happens.
The material on one side of the rubber tubes is thicker than the other, which makes them curl in a specific direction when inflated. The engineers note that the strength of each tube is weak and that combining them together allows Mr. Jelly Hands to grab some heavy objects. The pneumatic design makes it easy to adjust the force applied, so the design can grab delicate objects without harm.
I'm reminded of the barnacle monsters from Half-Life, but what use is this other than that? There are many possibilities, from creating robots that pick up fruit and veg in warehouses to underwater drones that can look at coral.
I don't mind where Mr. Jelly Hands ends up as long as Harvard remembers who named it.
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