Making life easier (Image: Image Source/Rex Features)
OPENING a door is trickier for robots than you might expect, but a gripper designed to help wheelchair users seems to have cracked the problem.
A door-opening robot must be able to grasp a variety of designs of door knobs and handles. It also needs to calculate “how much force is needed to open the door, the twisting angles to unlatch the door, and how much force is needed to unlatch it”, says Erin Rapacki, now at Anybots in Mountain View, California.
“The robot needs to know how much force is needed to open the door…
