DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) wants to develop an initiative to build a robotic hand which imitates the gestures of a human hand.
Robert Mandelbaum, a manager at DARPA, explained that the research agency and robotics communities in recent years have focused on robots which move on the ground going from point A to point B.
One of Darpa’s current aims is to develop an inexpensive, multipurpose robotic hand, able to agilely carry out tasks and which is even better performing than a human hand.
There will be multiple applications: screwdriver hand, rescue missions, support weapons, bomb defusing and explosive handling, hand for space and prostheses for the disabled.
Unlike industrial robots which constantly repeat the same action, these new intelligent hands will be able to perform certain precise tasks and then immediately afterwards completely different new tasks.
Darpa will supply the hardware and teams will work to integrate various software to the hardware.
