Our new hand/forearm with double the number of degrees of freedom now in action on the bot! There’s 22 DoFs on the hand, and 3 on the wrist/forearm.
This little video was made last night in the lab (teleoperated) and is real-time. Gives us confidence that we’ll very soon be making all new bots with those on.
Still some work to finish by end of year, in particular around extended tactile sensing integration (much more surface coverage than the previous hand), very fine controls through tendons, and shaving some weight off the forearm. All actuation has been moved to the forearm, which has increased its weight.
Interesting challenge around having enough squishiness/compliance and a protective layer on the fingers & palm, without affecting tactile sensing too much.
Congrats to all the hardware and firmware teams for this milestone, and happy thanksgiving to everyone!