00:00The transition from hydraulics to electric Atlas gave us an interesting jumping point.
00:08We knew that right about the same time that Boston Dynamics and Atlas wanted to focus more on manipulation,
00:16not just mobility and locomotion.
00:18And that was just a natural point to explore grippers with higher dexterity.
00:23We've known from the beginning that the gripper journey is a long one.
00:27Grippers are one of the most intricate components of a humanoid robot.
00:32They pack tons of functionality.
00:34We have to put in a lot of actuation and sensing into a very small space.
00:39So it's a very hard design problem.
00:41We've taken that long-term perspective and tried to maximize learnings through that path.
00:48GR1 is a gripper that is the first gripper of what we call the GR line,
00:53where basically we were looking to build something that had the most fundamental
00:59and, in a way, minimalistic capabilities of a human hand.
01:03GR1 allowed us to learn a ton of what it means to mount a gripper to a humanoid robot.
01:09That works most of the time well, but sometimes it falls,
01:13and inevitably once in a while it's going to fall on top of the gripper.
01:16So we wanted to figure out what is a good way to build a gripper that can resist that kind of failure mode,
01:23which is very important to our development path,
01:26being able to build grippers that are rugged and reliable.
01:29This is our second-generation gripper.
01:32It has seven degrees of freedom.
01:35We have seven different actuators within it,
01:37two for each of the three fingers,
01:39and the one for this articulated thumb joint.
01:42We have tactile sensing on the fingertips,
01:45and we have cameras here in the palm.
01:48The whole module is self-contained with all the actuation within it,
01:51and it's very easy to put on and off of the robot.
01:54And it was an iteration from our first-generation gripper,
01:57which had a similar three fingers,
01:59but there was no thumb, so they're all in the same line.
02:02Maybe the most important distinction from GR2 to GR1
02:06is the addition of a thumb, an opposable thumb.
02:09That really expands the type of grasps that it allows us to do.
02:13It really increases the flexibility of which objects we can grasp with it.
02:18And really, over the last year or so,
02:20we've realized that we can grasp almost anything that we throw at it.
02:27We landed on three because we believe that that's the fewest amount of fingers,
02:31that can achieve very complex manipulation tasks.
02:36So the fact that you do have three fingers brings a lot more to the table over just two,
02:40because the fact that there's some distance between them
02:43can help in maintaining a stable grasp,
02:46especially when you're maintaining larger or heavier objects
02:49that want to kind of rotate out of your hand.
02:51We do have the opportunity with this thumb to do some two-finger pinch grasps,
02:55which can be very helpful for delicate manipulation of very tiny objects,
03:00but that third finger coming into play when you are grasping something a little heavier
03:04or a little larger can be really helpful in maintaining a stable grasp.
03:09We've debated a lot, and we do wonder if there's an opportunity to add more fingers
03:14and whether they'd bring much to the table.
03:16We decided not to add more fingers because adding more fingers,
03:20it just adds more complexity that if it's not necessary,
03:23it always ends up meaning lower reliability, higher cost,
03:27just in general lower speed of development.
03:30We shouldn't take that as a dogma though, right?
03:33Three fingers was the right answer for the first phases of this program.
03:38We'll see what is the answer moving forward.
03:41Tactile sensing is force feedback.
03:47You can think of it as your sense of touch that you have in your own fingers.
03:51The tactile sensors live here on the fingertips,
03:53in this elastomer here that's at the top,
03:56that provides two functions.
03:58One is to give a high friction surface,
04:00and then also as it deforms,
04:02we have sensors within those fingertips that translate that into a force feedback.
04:06By having that sense of touch on your fingertips,
04:09you can apply very gentle forces to something.
04:11If you're perhaps manipulating a fragile object,
04:14you might want to handle it gingerly.
04:16You can also detect if you've dropped something.
04:18So if you didn't mean to, but it's fallen out of your hand,
04:20those tactile sensors can give you that feedback
04:22to understand what's going on.
04:24The goal is to apply as little force as possible,
04:27but maintaining a stable grasp.
04:29That's very similar to when you pick something up.
04:31You don't want to crush the object,
04:33but you want to make sure that it stays in your hand,
04:34it doesn't slip out of your hand.
04:35Too light a grasp, and something might slip away,
04:37and too heavy a grasp, and you might actually damage it.
04:45So inward, we can rotate up to 90 degrees,
04:48very similar to what your hand can do,
04:49but this has some extra human capability
04:51in that all these fingers can bend backwards completely.
04:54We can do some very clever things
04:55where you would actually be grasping on the backside of the gripper.
04:57So we actually have a left and right version of this gripper,
05:00similar to how our own hands,
05:01we have a left and right hand that are mirrored,
05:04but not the same.
05:05So this thumb always comes around on this one side.
05:08Atlas will usually be planning for the most optimal route
05:12to get the job done that it's trying to do.
05:14So if standing in a certain position
05:17and reaching in with the left hand
05:19will provide a more stable grasp
05:20or allow you to avoid objects in the environment,
05:22that's usually the way that it will choose.
05:24It doesn't tend to have a dominant left or right hand like you and I do.
05:33We're setting the next milestone in the direction of dexterity.
05:37It's becoming clear that tasks like bin picking or tool use
05:41or in general handling small objects are very prevalent in manufacturing.
05:47Interestingly, all of these things kind of are pushing us,
05:51not necessarily by design,
05:53but sort of naturally organically
05:55into more anthropomorphic designs of the gripper.
06:00Finding the gripper with the right sweet spot
06:02of dexterity, actuation and sensing
06:05is one of the most interesting journeys of the next few years
06:08and we're very excited to see where it takes us.
06:21For more videos, just subscribe to the channel.
06:34See you then.
06:35See you then.
06:36See you then.
Kommentare