Deep-sea diver hand offers freedom and feedback
Bodyskins and goggles are hardly the solution for divers who need to reach extreme depths. The Atmospheric Dive Suit (ADS) gives them the protection they need. Recently, The Economist detailed a technology advance that, for ADS-clad divers, will provide improved hand functions enabling better task performance than with prehensors. This is a remotely operated robotic hand, noted Popular Science, which, while resembling the human hand on the outside, is a complex arrangement of actuators and robotic mechanisms adapted to the pressures of the deep. The hand creators are Massachusetts-based Vishwa Robotics, which describes the Vishwa Extensor as an anthropomorphic robotic hand for deep-sea applications. The Extensor has two fingers and a thumb. How human-like are the Extensor's capabilities? The hand does more than open and shut. "The thumb can touch each of the fingertips, for example. Like the human hand, the Vishwa hand has four 'degrees of freedom'...