14 DAY TRIAL // A new device for disabling improvised explosive devices (IED) was developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). It comes in the form of a modular robotic arm, which can be constructed at relatively low costs.
If the instrument enters mainstream use, American soldiers may use it to address the improvised explosive problem, which has claimed many lives over the last decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The robotic arm is very dexterous, and can be outfitted with a wide assortment of fingers. In terms of price, durability, dexterity and modularity, it is far superior to any similar device on the market today.
Imaginatively called the Sandia Hand, the instrument is basically the solution to all the problems that have marred the wide-scale adoption of robotic arms for this type of application. Researchers listed all issues that other teams dealt with, and then figured out how to solve them in a single device.
The principal investigator of the robotic hand is SNL expert Curt Salisbury. His team developed Sandia Hand with funds from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The main challenge was to make the high-tech device affordable.
One of the methods used to reduce costs was to use magnets. The material enables various types of fingers to be quickly attached and detached from the main body of the robotic arm. This is what gives Sandia Hand is impressive modularity.
In addition to fingers, field operators can also attach flashlights, screwdrivers or cameras on the device.
“Current iterations of robotic hands can cost more than $250,000. We need the flexibility and capability of a robotic hand to save human lives, and it needs to be priced for wide distribution to troops,” explains Philip Heermann, the senior manager at SNL.
“Hands are considered the most difficult part of the robotic system, and are also the least available due to the need for high dexterity at a low cost,” Salisbury comments. He adds that the new instrument sheds its fingers if its operator accidentally drops it or slams it into an obstacle.
“Rather than breaking the hand, this configuration allows the user to recover very quickly, and fingers can easily be put back in their sockets. In addition, if a finger pops off, the robot can actually pick it up with the remaining fingers, move into position and resocket the finger by itself,” Salisbury adds.
“The Sandia Hand has 12 degrees of freedom, and is estimated to retail for about $800 per degree of freedom – $10,000 total – in low-volume production. This 90 percent cost reduction is really a breakthrough,” the expert concludes.