Amazon's Robotics A.I. Group recently made a generous donation to the Department's Robotics Lab for research usage. The donated robotic hand, called a Shadow Hand, equipped with a BioTac sensor in each fingertip, is valued at $180,000.
The hand was obtained through an industry connection a student made with Amazon's Robotics A.I. Group. Yuechuan Xue, Ph.D. student participating in the Department's Robotics Lab, completed a summer internship at Amazon where he worked on the Robotics A.I. team focusing on robotic grasp, end-of-arm tool design, and compliant control. The partnership lead to the generous donation and sets the tone for a fruitful partnership in the future.
"This anthropomorphic hand will greatly facilitate our ongoing investigations into two robotic manipulation tasks: a) a power grasping of a human tool and b) robotic fastening with dexterity. Shadow Hand, with its high degrees of freedom and reliable performance, will continue to provide an excellent foundation for both the development and validation stages in these efforts," said Yan-Bin Jia, the Principal Investigator (PI) for the lab.