Teenager builds advanced robot hand entirely from Lego pieces

A robot hand built from Lego pieces by a 16-year-old and his father can grab and move objects, displaying similar qualities to a leading robotic hand. Jared Lepora, a student at Bristol Grammar School, UK, began developing the hand when he was 14 with his father, Nathan Lepora, who works at the University of Bristol. The device borrows principles from cutting-edge robotic hands, including the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, but uses only off-the-shelf parts from Lego Mindstorms, a line of educational kits for building programmable robots. "My dad's a professor at Bristol University for robotics, and I really liked the designs [of robotic hands]," says Jared. "It just inspired me to do it in an educational format and out of Lego." The hand is driven by two motors using tendons, and each of its four fingers has three joints.