In a significant step towards creating more capable household robots, researchers at Improbable AI Lab and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a groundbreaking two-finger robotic gripper designed to manipulate a wide variety of everyday objects with remarkable dexterity.

The new robotic system, described in a preprint paper on arXiv and set to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2024, is a testament to the researchers' commitment to enabling robots to efficiently assist humans in real-world settings.

"We provide the mechanical and dynamical requirements for a robotic finger capable of performing 30 diverse everyday tasks," wrote Rubén Castro Ornelas, Tomás Cantú, and their colleagues. "To match these requirements, we present a finger design based on series-elastic actuation that we call the everyday finger. Our focus is to make the fingers as compact as possible while achieving the desired performance."

The key innovation lies in the human-like design of the robotic fingers, which resemble their biological counterparts in both size and shape. This allows the fingers to bend and tightly grasp a wide range of objects, from delicate strawberries to thin pieces of paper, with impressive dexterity.

"Our finger only has 2 DOF [degrees of freedom]," the researchers noted. "With a 3rd DOF, the size of the palm would increase. It would be difficult to fit five fingers onto a hand in a future iteration, but a three- and maybe a four-finger hand is still possible."

To evaluate the performance of their two-finger gripper, the team conducted a series of real-world experiments, testing the system's speed, compliance, and force application in three basic "pick-and-place" tasks, such as picking up dishes and placing them in a rack.

"We evaluated everyday fingers by constructing a two-finger robotic hand that was tested on various performance parameters and tasks like picking and placing dishes in a rack, picking thin and flat objects like paper and delicate objects such as strawberries," Ornelas, Cantú, and their colleagues wrote.

The results of these initial tests were remarkably promising, with the researchers' two-finger gripper successfully completing all three tasks. While these may seem like simple, everyday activities, they are precisely the kinds of tasks that will be crucial for the development of basic household robots capable of assisting humans in their daily lives.

"The promising results gathered in initial tests thus highlight the gripper's promise for the development of basic household robots," said industry analyst Sarah Lim. "In the future, the researchers could further improve their gripper's design and assess its performance on a broader range of daily tasks."

As the world eagerly awaits the next generation of household robots, the work of the Improbable AI Lab and MIT researchers stands as a significant step forward in the quest to create machines that can reliably and effectively manipulate the objects we encounter in our daily lives.

"The development of new cost-effective robotic grippers or other hand-like artificial systems plays a key role in enabling dexterous object manipulation in robots," the researchers wrote. With their innovative two-finger gripper, they have taken a major leap towards realizing this vision and paving the way for a future where robots can truly become indispensable partners in our homes and beyond.