A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a robotic hand assistant that comes with two extra fingers, for those who feel five fingers aren't enough.
The device, called "supernumerary robotic fingers", is able to copy the normal grasping motion of the hand, according to NBC News. Sensors are used to help the hand assistant figure out when and how close to position the extra fingers.
"This is a completely intuitive and natural way to move your robotic fingers," said Harry Asada, mechanical engineering professor at MIT and leader of the team. "You do not need to command the robot, but simply move your fingers naturally. Then the robot fingers react and assist your fingers."
Asada designed the hand assistant with graduate student Faye Wu to grab objects in the correct position. Users wear the device around the wrist and are able to perform common hand movements with it. When a user closes their fingers, the robot fingers will also close. The fingers are designed to be large enough to give the wearer a longer reach and securely hold large objects, CNET reported.
With the device, wearers can perform actions that would be difficult to accomplish with only one hand, such as opening plastic containers and taking the lids off jars.
The team is looking to make supernumerary robotic fingers a useful tool for people who have disabilities. The next goal for the project is to program the fingers to apply the right amount of force for objects of different weights, CNET reported.
"With an object that looks small but is heavy, or is slippery, the posture would be the same, but the force would be different, so how would it adapt to that? That's the next thing we'll look at," Wu said.
