Robots now have much greater dexterity thanks to fingertip sensors

Good as robots are at repeating the same motion over and over, they can’t adapt to situations nearly as well as good ‘old flesh-and-bones. That’s where MIT’s new fingertip sensor comes in. The technology employed to make a robot version of our fingertips is sophisticated, but surprisingly simple. It uses an existing project called GelSight, which is a rubber-like material that can map out a surface in microscopic detail when placed on it. The MIT team used a version that’s 100x less sensitive than the original — but as a result, it’s small enough to fit onto a fingertip, and give real-time feedback about surfaces to the robot.