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From: dms@MIT-HERMES.ARPA (David M. Siegel)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: dexterity of robots
Message-ID: <8602081646.AA04659@s1-b.arpa>
Date: Sat, 8-Feb-86 11:32:49 EST
Article-I.D.: s1-b.8602081646.AA04659
Posted: Sat Feb  8 11:32:49 1986
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    Date: 1 Feb 86 06:52:48 GMT
    From: ucdavis!lll-crg!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!jlg@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
    Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory

    I keep fairly close tabs on AI and robotics.  There is no way with
    today's technology to build an automaton that could have repaired
    the Solar MAX satellite.  Much less - capture and return disabled
    satellites.  Teleoperation doesn't help this much, the problem is
    at least partly one of dexterity.

I'm working on a project that attempts to duplicate the dexterity of a
human hand, and you might be surprised at what has already been
achieved. The hand, a joint project between the University of Utah and
the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, has 3 fingers and an opposing
thumb. Each finger has 4 degrees of freedom, giving the hand a total
of 16 joints. Soon it should be equipped with a large number of
tactile sensors, giving it a primitive (compared with humans) sense
of touch. 

While we still have a while to go before a device like the Utah/MIT hand
could be used to repair a satellite, the time is not so far in the
future. And if a billions dollars (half the cost of a shuttle) where
put into the project, I'd guess that a dexterous teleoperator version
could be built in a handful of years.

-Dave