Both the government and private sector continue to work on building more functional robots to accomplish various tasks, especially ones that aren’t suited or safe for humans. For example, NASA’s Mars Perseverance Mission, which is fully robotic, is scheduled to make planetfall on Mars next week. In addition to the Pathfinder robot, which is pretty well-known at this point, it will also be carrying the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a robotic drone specially designed to fly around and explore within the thin atmosphere of Mars.
But mobility is only one aspect of creating the advanced robots and robotic tools of the future. For the most part, we have the locomotion part down. We already have thousands of flying drones and robots, plus specialized models that can climb up the side of cliffs or work completely in or under the water.
The problem is that once we get those robots into inaccessible or inhospitable places, they need to be able to actually manipulate their environment in the same way that a human would. And for that, they pretty much need hands, ideally ones with fingers and maybe a thumb. I recently talked with a researcher at the Army Research Laboratory who told me that the ability to manipulate physical space, through either some type of actuator or robotic hand, would be an important key to successful robot deployments in the future.
Last week, we got a first look at what that might look like. Boston Dynamics, one of the most advanced robot-making comp ..
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