Kenny Shaw/CMU
Use your hands for a moment. Grab that bottle on your desk and unscrew the cap. Or get a pencil or pen and write your name. You might already be using your hand to read this story on your phone—that works too. As you do, notice each movement that your hands and fingers make, and the tiny changes in pressure you apply as you go through the motions.
Pay close enough attention and you’ll see that your hands are doing a lot more than you realized. But it’s something that you tend not to think about. After all, you’ve probably made these motions countless times in your life.
However, Kenny Shaw thinks about these motions a lot. As a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, he’s devoted his research to figuring out how hands work—and how to replicate them in machines.