Robot Era, a Beijing-based humanoid robot startup, introduced a self-developed dexterous hand called XHand.
The company says it allows for the completion of a number of everyday and industry tasks.
XBot-L humanoid uses the XHand
Robot Era’s XBot-L, a full-size humanoid robot, is equipped with the XHand. In the video below, XBot-L exercises its fingers, clenches and unclenches its hands, swing its arms, chucks plush toys into a box and fondles a purring cat.
The robot also cuts a withered leaf from the stem of a potted plant, handles robotic gears, pumps a balloon and shoots plastic marbles.
Another element of the XBot-L’s dexterity is its upper limb agility. In the video, the humanoid throws a punch to bring down a pile of foam blocks. In other scenes, it gently sets down an egg on the table, and performs other delicate tasks just like a human.
This is the first time Robot Era demonstrated its dexterous hand, an important end effector for a humanoid robot to achieve object manipulation. XHand says that the hand has 12 active degrees of freedom.
It boasts built-in tactile sensors, a simple transmission structure, powerful motor joints and other in-house technologies. They not only bolster motion control precision, but also contribute to smooth and reliable operation.
Embedded into each fingertip of the XHand are highly sensitive array sensors that collect and generate information including the size, shape, texture, softness and force feedback of the object being grasped.
The dexterous hand generates a maximum force of 80 neutrons and exceeds human capabilities in object grasping. With a high payload, it is designed to hold heavy items like a 5kg bottle of water and adapt to a variety of working environments.
More importantly, the intricate inner mechanisms of the XHand underpin deeper integration with advanced AI models and algorithms, providing a hardware platform for future improvements in embodied AI.
When attached to XBot-L, the XHand assists the robot with factory jobs like material handling, sorting, picking and assembling.
Moreover, thanks to the design of the hands, it can also be deployed to a home setting to carry out household chores such as gardening and pet sitting, opening up new use cases for humanoid robotics, according to the company.
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