Swiss researchers have unveiled a cutting-edge robotic arm that can catch objects in mid-air.
The machine, which comes from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, has four fingers and three joints, Re/code reported. The bionic arm can automatically detect objects in the air, going from being totally still to holding the object in its "fingers" in less than five-hundredths of a second.
The researchers believe that robots will need to be capable of such agile movements as bionic technology moves forward and potentially becomes common for everyday use. The newly developed robotic arm can catch all kinds of objects ranging from a tennis racket to a ball to a bottle.
"Increasingly present in our daily lives and used to perform various tasks, robots will be able to either catch or dodge complex objects in full-motion," Aude Billard, head of EPFL's Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, said in a press release. "Not only do we need machines able to react on the spot, but also to predict the moving object's dynamics and generate a movement in the opposite direction."
Measuring around 4 feet 9 inches long, the robotic arm uses a series of cameras to follow objects in the air and figure out where they will move based on their trajectories, speeds and rotational movements.
The bionic arm's ability to react instead of simply following a set program is key to implementing robotics into our daily lives, Billard said.
"Today's machines are often pre-programmed and cannot quickly assimilate data changes," the researcher noted in a statement. "Consequently, their only choice is to recalculate the trajectories, which requires too much time from them in situations in which every fraction of a second can be decisive."
According to Re/code, the team is looking to put a bionic arm on a satellite to catch space debris.
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