The Fraunhofer Institute forProduction Systems and Design Technology(IPK) from Berlin (Germany) has created a robot with a fingertip sensitivity that allows it to even hold an egg without breaking it.
The automaton, baptized as“pi4-workerbot”, has similar proportions to the human and has two articulated arms that work independently and that “allow him to pass pieces from one hand to another”. In addition to a rotary joint in the shoulder, Workerbot hasa turning mechanism equivalent to the human wrist. As if that were not enough, it has three cameras: a sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) camera located on its front, to perceive the environment, and two for inspection tasks. “With two different cameras, you can examine one aspect with your left eye and one with your right,” explains Matthias Krinke, Managing Director of pi4-Robotics, the company responsible for marketing the robot.
However, the most interesting thing about pi4-workerbot is that researchers have also endowed it withtenderness in the fingertip, enough forhold an egg without breaking it. To this must be added that, to facilitate work with the new machine, it has severalfacial expressions, in such a way that “if the work is going well, he smiles placidly, while when he seems bored, he is waiting for more work, which indicates to the production manager that it is possible to speed up the process.”
This innovative robot is the fruit of the PISA project, funded by the EU’s Sixth Framework Program (FP6), and its creators trust that its invention will contribute to themaintenance of European industrial competitiveness with respect to the rest of the world.
Robot marathon
