Robotic Arm Opens Doors For Wheelchair Users.

Robotic Arm Opens Doors For Wheelchair Users.

Popular Science (11/25, Fox) reports that robotics engineer Erin Rapacki, "continuing a student project she began at University of Massachusetts, Lowell...has created a cheap robot arm that can serve as a door-opening assistant to wheelchair bound humans, or as the primary arm for mobile robots. The trick was finding the right material for the fingers, something hard enough to grasp the handle, but supple enough fit a range of shapes."

        New Scientist (11/24, Hecht) reported that the door-opening robotic arm, or DORA, "was able to open doors with 14 different handles in 85 per cent of tests involving pushing the door and 65 per cent of pulling tests." In order "to keep her device simple," Rapacki used "a motor-driven set of gears" that "extends the gripper towards the handle with its three fingers spread apart." In addition, "stiff plastic fingers with plates to constrain their sideways motion" were used after flexible neoprene fingers proved too soft, and Rapacki "also added a slip clutch to the drive system, to allow the device to hold and turn the knob at the same time as pushing or pulling." Rapacki presented the device at the recent IEEE robotics conference in Woburn, Massachusetts.