This five-fingered robot hand developed by University of Washington computer science and engineering researchers can learn how to perform dexterous manipulation -- like spinning a tube full of coffee beans -- on its own, rather than having humans program its actions. A University of Washington team of computer scientists and engineers has built what they say is one of the most highly capable five-fingered robot hands in the world. It can perform dexterous manipulation and learn from its own experience without needing humans to direct it. Their work is described in a paper to be presented May 17 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. "Hand manipulation is one of the hardest problems that roboticists have to solve," said lead author Vikash Kumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. "A lot of robots today have pretty capable arms but the hand is as simple as a suction cup or maybe a claw or a gripper."

Robots have done and are able to do some of the most amazing tasks we never thought we could trust to a machine. Now, robots have a hand in healthcare, perform delivery tasks by themselves, even milk cows. But one thing they have never been really good at is using hands. You get these amazing robots that look like humans, talk like humans, and have the pincers of a crab. A five-fingered robot developed at the University of Washington is capable of dexterous hand movements, and the ability to learn from its own experiences without human intervention.