Robot Grasping and Manipulation: A Prospective
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“A simple handshake would give them away”. This is how Anthony Hopkins' fictional character, Dr Robert Ford, summarises a particular flaw of the 2016 science-fiction Westworld's hosts. In the storyline, Westworld is a futuristic theme park and the hosts are autonomous robots engineered to be indistinguishable from the human guests, except for their hands that have not been perfected yet. In another classic science-fiction saga, scientists unlock the secrets of full synthetic intelligence, Skynet, by reverse engineering a futuristic hand. In both storylines, reality inspires fiction on one crucial point: designing hands and reproducing robust and reliable manipulation actions is one of the biggest challenges in robotics. Solving this problem would lead us to a new, improved era of autonomy. A century ago, the third industrial revolution brought robots into the assembly lines, changing our way of working forever. The next revolution has already started by bringing us artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, enhancing our quality of life in our jobs and everyday lives–even combating worldwide pandemics.
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