Robotic manipulators that can provide high gripping force in hazardous environments still need delicate control - and what better way to provide that control than directly from a human hand? That’s the thinking behind ExoHand, a prosthetic developed by Festo of Germany - a veteran maker of robots - and modelled by turns on the herring gull, penguin or even the elephant’s trunk. ExoHand is a pneumatically-driven exoskeleton that fits the hand of the user like a glove. The operator’s hand movements are detected and then transmitted to a robotic arm that controls its own version of the hand.
