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posted by martyb on Friday June 05 2020, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the lending-a-hand dept.

Robotic Third Arm Can Smash Through Walls

When we've written about adding useful robotic bits to people in the past, whether it's some extra fingers or an additional arm or two, the functionality has generally been limited to slow moving, lightweight tasks. Holding or carrying things. Stabilizing objects or the user. That sort of thing. But that's not what we want. What we want are wearable robotic arms that turn us into a superhero, like Marvel Comics' Doc Ock, who I'm just going to go ahead and assume is a good guy because those robotic arms strapped to his torso look awesome.

At ICRA this week, researchers from Université de Sherbrooke in Canada are finally giving us what we want, in the form of a waist-mounted remote controlled hydraulic arm that can help you with all kinds of tasks while also being able, should you feel the need, to smash through walls.

Supernumerary 3DOF Robotic Arm (2m50s video)

Multifunctional 3-DOF Wearable Supernumerary Robotic Arm Based on Magnetorheological Clutches


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  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Friday June 05 2020, @05:02PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Friday June 05 2020, @05:02PM (#1003831) Homepage

    While it may be an interesting idea, having to have a operator control the arm remotely is a No Go in my book.
    What I observed in the video was a person wearing a device that was constantly shifting her center of balance, and her having to compensate awkwardly.
    When the person wearing the arm is the one controlling said arm, then they will have something.

    As it stands, you need two people to have two legs and three arms to use this. If you get rid of the remote controlled gismo, you have two whole people to do the work, instead of one person with three arms.

    That was the same issue I saw. The demonstration of painting while on a ladder seemed quite dangerous. Anything with enough power to punch through a wall could easily lever that person off of the ladder with a single wrong move. She looked like she was holding on to the ladder for dear life!

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