Eduardo Torres-Jara, a Ph.D. candidate in the Humanoid Robotics Group at the MIT CSAIL, stands with Obrero, a "sensitive manipulation" robot that relates to the world through touch.
The aqua domes on Obrero's palm, two fingers and thumb are the equivalent of the tiny ridges that make up a human fingerprint. A human hand relies on these ridges to detect when something is slipping from its grasp, if an object is hard or soft, to determine how much pressure it's applying to an object, or feel a change in weight when it has put something down and is ready to let go. Obrero can react to this same type of tactile feedback.
Photo by MIT CSAIL
