A gripper with two thumbs! 🐨 Handheld data collection is how a lot of manipulation datasets get built now. Someone picks up a gripper-shaped device, does the task by hand, and the recording becomes training data. Voila! 🤌🏼 The catch is that these devices are usually shaped to match whatever robot gripper already exists. The human ends up working around the robot's morphology, which costs both ergonomics and the quality of the demonstration being recorded. The @rai_inst team designed The Koala Gripper. It includes two devices with full parity: a capture device a person holds, and a robotic device that executes the learned policy. Anything you can do with one, the other reproduces. The shared feature set gets updated as the design iterates, so neither side quietly compromises the other. The morphology is where it gets interesting. Two independently controlled underactuated fingers are opposed by a single pivoting "dual thumb", which is where the koala name comes from. → Each finger is a 9-bar linkage with one actuated and one underactuated degree of freedom, with the spring sitting proximal to the phalanges to drive preshaping → Fingernails on the distal link for precise pinches, contoured pads for secure wrap grasps → The handheld trigger traces a natural fingertip arc instead of a straight line, lengthening the stroke and giving the operator better mechanical advantage → On the robot side, a frameless motor with an integrated high-pitch ballscrew keeps reflected inertia low, so the fingers stay backdrivable at an effective mass of tens of grams The dual thumb is what buys tool stabilising, singulating one object out of a pile, and tabletop pinches. Congrats to @zubinbot and the RAI Institute team behind it 👏🏼 🔗 Project page: ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

Nature-inspired gripper! 🦎 A chameleon doesn't grab its prey, but its tongue wraps around it. Festo built a gripper that does the same thing, and the mechanism is more elegant than it looks. The FlexShapeGripper is an elastic silicone cap sitting on a water-filled chamber. It works as a double-acting cylinder, one chamber holds compressed air, the other is permanently filled with water. Vent the air chamber, and the water-filled silicone pulls itself inwards. The cap folds over whatever is underneath and locks around its shape. The grip is form-locking, so the object's own geometry does the work of holding it. → Adapts to any shape, including delicate and irregularly shaped items where rigid jaws fail → Can pick up and deposit several objects in one operation → Pneumatic drive, minimal energy consumption → The silicone cap maps directly onto the chameleon's tongue Always good to see the mimicry developments from Festo! :) ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

🚀👍Small tools, big impact. Hand grippers, resistance bands and even wrist exercisers help astronauts to train different muscle groups in microgravity. Besides maintaining strength, these quick workouts can also help relieve stress during long-duration missions. [📹/CMS]

you can collect robot training data without robots now HiFi-UMI records humans performing tasks with a handheld gripper, then uses that data to post-train policies that deploy directly on real robots Across 3 model families, it matched robot teleoperation within 3.1 percentage points Best result: 85% success on precision insertion. it's just a matter of collecting accurate human demonstrations now.

How flexible is the new I2RT arm? 👀🦾 Being able to reach the other side of the gripper is actually pretty wild. You can really see the range of motion when doing these Challenger tasks. Still exploring what this arm can do, but the flexibility is definitely there. @axisrobotics keeps making these tasks more interesting.

Open-source robot arm meets hand tracking [📍GitHub below] It is designed with an industrial mindset but built as a 3D-printed desktop system. PAROL6 paired with a LEAP Motion controller is a nice example of how accessible robot teleoperation has become. • Hand motion is streamed to the robot at 100 Hz via UDP • A pneumatic gripper is controlled by simple fist open and close gestures • The entire robot stack is open source, from mechanics to control software Combine that with low-latency hand tracking and you get a very practical platform for learning manipulation, teleoperation, and human-robot interfaces. This kind of setup is great for experimentation, teleop, data collection, and teaching robots by demonstration All without proprietary hardware or locked software. Credit to @SourceRobotics 📍Code: —— Weekly robotics and AI insights. Subscribe free: