16-year-old Jared K. Lepora built a lifelike, affordable LEGO MINDSTORMS robotic hand with two motors
16-year-old builds lifelike robotic hand with LEGO MINDSTORMS, proving affordable innovation in education
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Jared K. Lepora, a 16-year-old student of Bristol Grammar School has built an innovative robotic hand that is almost entirely made out of LEGO MINDSTORMS. The device is called Educational SoftHand-A, which performs the grasping motions in a very lifelike way and the movements are much more complicated than those of costly research models. The implication of this work is that advanced robotics could become available to the whole world at low prices and as a result of the creative minds.
According to research, the robot hand includes four fingers and twelve joints that are powered by only two motors. The most innovative aspect of the hand is a LEGO-based differential gearbox that shares the force equally between the fingers. If a single finger is stopped by a hard surface, the device continues its operation by transferring the power to the remaining fingers — this is the so-called “soft synergy” system. Thus the fingers can softly cling to the different-shaped and even different-textured objects, the whole process taking not more than one second.
Although not as an industrial application, the invention by Lepora is a marriage of play and engineering. It implements difficult robotic concepts, including adaptive grasping and tendon-driven movement, with straightforward and commonly accessible components. The design demonstrates that in the real world robotics studies, you do not need fancy labs but rather interest and creative thinking. With modular kits becoming increasingly popular in STEM education, other projects such as the LEGO SoftHand-A could encourage more young engineers to explore the real robotic design and control systems.
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