Supernumerary Robotic Fingers Enhance Grasping Motion of the Human Hand

Researchers at MIT have developed a robot that enhances the grasping motion of the human hand. The device, worn around the user's wrist, works essentially like two extra fingers adjacent to the pinky and thumb. The supernumerary robotic fingers, or SR fingers, consist of actuators linked together to exert forces as strong as those of human fingers during a grasping motion. The researchers take input from a glove covered with bending sensors that measure the position of the human fingers. Through an algorithm, the researchers can control the output of the SR fingers with the position of the human fingers for natural and implicit motion.