Today in ‘Things That Will One Day Squeeze The Life Out Of You After You Smart Off One Time Too Many To Our Coming Robot Overlords’ news: this new robotic hand from DARPA. The mechanical limb can grip things as small as a ball bearing, lift objects as heavy as a 50-pound kettle bell, and doesn’t so much as flinch when you give it your best shot with a baseball bat.
So, y’know, I hope you weren’t attached to organic life being the dominant thing on this planet for, like, all that much longer.
DARPA’s ARM program went looking for folks to replace current robot hands with a cheaper, more robust alternative that can be manufactured for as little as $3,000 per hand. The entry being demonstrated in the video above is the work of Roomba maker iRobot, with Ivy League assists provided by Yale and Harvard. The arms could one day make their way to robots on battlefields around the world and could also benefit robots designed for corporate. As for the music that accompanies the video, we don’t know where the agency got that, but we’re glad they did.
(via DARPA)
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