General-purpose robots should possess humanlike dexterity and agility to perform tasks with the same versatility as us. A human-like form factor further enables the use of vast datasets of human-hand interactions. However, the primary bottleneck in dexterous manipulation lies not only in software but arguably even more in hardware. Robotic hands that approach human capabilities are often prohibitively expensive, bulky, or require enterprise-level maintenance, limiting their accessibility for broader research and practical applications. What if the research community could get started with reliable dexterous hands within a day? We present the open-source ORCA hand, a reliable and anthropomorphic 17-DoF tendon-driven robotic hand with integrated tactile sensors, fully assembled in less than eight hours and built for a material cost below 2,000 CHF. We showcase ORCA’s key design features such as popping joints, auto-calibration, and tensioning systems that significantly reduce complexity while increasing reliability, accuracy, and robustness. We benchmark the ORCA hand across a variety of tasks, ranging from teleoperation and imitation learning to zero-shot sim-to-real reinforcement learning. Furthermore, we demonstrate its durability, withstanding more than 10,000 continuous operation cycles—equivalent to approximately 20 hours—without hardware failure, the only constraint being the duration of the experiment itself. Video is here: youtu.be/kUbPSYMmOds. Design files, source code, and documentation are available at srl.ethz.ch/orcahand.

This paper presents the SABD hand, a 16-degree-of-freedom (DoF) robotic hand that departs from purely anthropomorphic designs to achieve an expanded grasp envelope, enable manipulation poses beyond human capability, and reduce the required number of actuators. This is achieved by combining the adduction/abduction (Add/Abd) joint of digits four and five into a single joint with a large range of motion. The combined joint increases the workspace of the digits by 400% and reduces the required DoFs while retaining dexterity. Experimental results demonstrate that the combined Add/Abd joint enables the hand to grasp objects with a side distance of up to 200 mm. Reinforcement learning-based investigations show that the design enables grasping policies that are effective not only for handling larger objects but also for achieving enhanced grasp stability. In teleoperated trials, the hand successfully performed 86% of attempted grasps on suitable YCB objects, including challenging non-anthropomorphic configurations. These findings validate the design’s ability to enhance grasp stability, flexibility, and dexterous manipulation without added complexity, making it well-suited for a wide range of applications.

In a future with autonomous robots, visual and spatial perception is of utmost importance for robotic systems. Particularly for aerial robotics, there are many applications where utilizing visual perception is necessary for any real-world scenarios. Robotic aerial grasping using drones promises fast pick-and-place solutions with a large increase in mobility over other robotic solutions. Utilizing Mask R-CNN scene segmentation (detectron2), we propose a vision-based system for autonomous rapid aerial grasping which does not rely on mark-ers for object localization and does not require the appearance of the object to be previously known. Combining segmented images with spatial information from a depth camera, we generate a dense point cloud of the detected objects and perform geometry - based grasp planning to determine grasping points on the objects. In real-world experiments on a dynamically grasping aerial platform, we show that our system can replicate the performance of a motion capture system for object local-ization up to 94.5 % of the baseline grasping success rate. With our results, we show the first use of geometry-based grasping techniques with a flying platform and aim to increase the autonomy of existing aerial manipulation platforms, bringing them further towards real-world applications in warehouses and similar environments.††Code: https://github.com/srl-ethz/detectron-realsense

To aid in real-world situations, soft robots need to be able to estimate their state and external interactions based on proprioceptive sensors. Estimating disturbances allows a soft robot to perform desirable force control. However, even in the case of rigid manipulators, force estimation at the end-effector is seen as a non-trivial problem. And indeed, current approaches to address this challenge have shortcomings that prevent their general application. They are often based on simplified soft dynamic models, such as the ones relying on a piece-wise constant curvature approximation or matched rigid-body models that do not represent enough details of the problem. This severely limits applications in complex human-robot interaction. Finite element method (FEM) based modeling allows for predictions of soft robot dynamics in a more generic fashion. Here, using the soft robot modeling capabilities of the frame-work SOFA, we built a detailed FEM model of a multi-segment soft continuum robotic arm composed of compliant deformable materials and fiber-reinforced pressurized actuation chambers. In addition, a model for sensors that provide orientation output is presented. This model is used to establish a state observer for the manipulator. The sensor model is adequate for representing the output of flexible bend sensors as well as orientations provided by IMUs or coming from tracking systems, all of which are popular choices in soft robotics. Model parameters were calibrated to match imperfections of the manual fabrication process using physical experiments. We then solve a quadratic programming inverse statics problem to compute the components of external force that explain the pose mismatch. Our experiments show an average force estimation error of around 1.2%. As the methods proposed are generic, these results are encouraging for the task of building soft robots exhibiting complex, reactive, sensor-based behavior that can be deployed in human-centered environments.