(Photo: DLR)
I was an only child for 9 years of my life. The interesting thing about being the first child is that your parents aren’t quite sure how to raise you; they just don’t have the experience to realize that no, we probably shouldn’t let our young son watch Terminator 2, Robocop, or any other number of violent 80’s movies I consumed as a child. Through their inexperience (or awesomeness, depending on how you look at it) I developed an interest in robots at a young age, especially of the Robot Jox variety. That interest has carried into adulthood in the form of my obsession over human augmentation, especially in the form of new limbs.
The video above shows off a mechanical hand developed by the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, which is part of the German Aerospace Center, or DLR for short. This particular hand is an experiment, but the potential implications are endless. Imagine an actual Terminator-like killing machine that would live in your house, serve you ice-cream cake, and give you a back massage with its incredibly strong murderous hands; amazing.
You can read all about the DLR developed hand by reading the full (and incredibly interesting article) at IEEE Spectrum.
