A team of researchers at MIT are developing sets of “Supernumerary Robotic Limbs,” which, as the name suggest, give you extra limbs to accomplish tasks you may find difficult or impossible otherwise. The team presented their latest SRL prototype set yesterday, at the ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) event in Hong Kong.
The team presented two models at ICRA, one with a pair of arms that sprout from your shoulders and a second whose robotic arms curl out from your waist. Each are designed to help with daily tasks that you might have previously found difficult or even impossible.
In other words, they provide a helping hand.
…moving on.
The shoulder SRLS come with two robotic arms mounted so that the reaction forces that work on them are in line with your spine. Each robotic arm comes with five degrees of free movement, as well as interchangeable end effectors.
The shoulder SRL models are designed to assist with things that take place over your head, like getting something down from a really tall shelf—which would be great for me, because I’m hobbit-sized—or helping when your other sets of arms are busy. The waist-level SRLS are designed for lower tasks, and can even be used as an extra set of legs, if you like.
(image 2)
You don’t control the arms yourselves. Both sets of SRLs monitor something called “inertial measurement units” that users would wear on both wrists, so they can track what your other arms are doing and stay out of the way. A third IMU is placed at the base of the shoulder mount, for the higher SRL, which also uses gyro and accelerometer data from these gadgets in order to predict which motion would be most helpful.
For more information, you can take a look at the shoulder SRL demo above or visit Discovery.
Advertisement
