Robots can now perform the act of picking up a pencil and holding it with a grip which is beyond abilities of even the most dextrous bots. Scientists and engineers from the University of Washington have built a bot hand which can only perform exterous manipulation. This bot can also be able to learn from its own experience without any involvement of human directions.

This part of robotics which is seen some artificial intelligence in almost all parts of the tasks from computer vision to many more mysteries. Which is called a bipedal gait?

“Hand manipulation is one of the hardest problems that roboticists have to solve. 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,” says Vikash Kumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering.

The researchers developed a simulation model which can allow a computer to analyze movements in real time. With the most basic science, these robots have their special calculation on what action to be done at a particular time off work.

“Usually, people look at a motion and try to determine what exactly needs to happen–the pinky needs to move that way, so we’ll put some rules in and try it and if something doesn’t work, oh the middle finger moved too much and the pen tilted, so we’ll try another rule,” said senior author and lab director Emo Todorov.

“It’s almost like making an animated film–it looks real but there was an army of animators tweaking it. What we are using is a universal approach that enables the robot to learn from its own movements and requires no tweaking from us,” Todorov said.