[Miller] wanted to practice a bit with some wireless modules and wound up creating a robotic hand he could teleoperate with the help of a haptic glove. It lookes highly reproducible, as you can see the video, below the break.

The glove uses an Arduino’s analog to digital converter to read some flex sensors. Commercial flex sensors are pretty expensive, so he experimented with some homemade sensors. The ones with tin foil and graphite didn’t work well, but using some bent can metal worked better despite not having good resolution.

The wireless communications set up was pretty easy thanks to the NRF24L01 modules. The hard part was sewing the flex sensors into the glove. We thought some of the circuitry looked precarious on the glove, too.

For the robot hand, he used balsa wood and hinges for each joint. Flexible thread provided the return power like a spring. The hand was surprisingly artistic in a primitive sort of way.

While this is a cool demo, the hand isn’t likely to be practical for much as it is. Nerve impulses are better but harder. The glove reminded us a little of one we’d seen before.

We can’t decide if [MertArduino’s] robotic hand project is more art or demonstration project. The construction using springs, fishing line, and servo motors isn’t going to give you a practical hand that could grip or manipulate anything significant. However, the project shows off a lot of interesting construction techniques and is a fun demonstration for using nRF24L01 wireless in a project. You can see a video of the contraption, below.

A glove uses homemade flex sensors to send wireless commands to the hand. Another Arduino drives an array of servo motors that make the fingers flex. You don’t get fine control, nor any real grip strength, but the hand more or less will duplicate your movements. We noticed one finger seemed poorly controlled, but we suspect that was one of the homemade flex sensors going rouge.

The flex sensors are ingenious, but probably not very reliable. They consist of a short flexible tube, an LED and a light-dependent resistor. We’re guessing a lot of factors could change the amount of light that goes around a bent tube, and that may be what’s wrong with the one finger in the video.

We’d love to try this project using some conductive bag flex sensors. Although this hand doesn’t look like a gripper, we wondered if it could be used for sign language projects.

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To “pipe in” the new year, [John] decided to build a bagpipe-playing robot. Unlike other instrument-playing robots that we’ve seen before, this one is somewhat anatomically correct as well. John went the extra mile and 3D printed fingers and hands to play his set of pipes.

The brains of the robot are handled by an Arduino Mega 2560, which drives a set of solenoids through a driver board. The hands themselves are printed from the open source Enabling the Future project which is an organization that 3D prints prosthetic hands for matched recipients, especially people who can’t otherwise afford prosthetics. He had to scale up his hands by 171% to get them to play the pipes correctly, but from there it was a fairly straightforward matter of providing air to the bag (via a human being) and programming the Arduino to play a few songs.

The bagpipe isn’t a particularly common instrument (at least in parts of the world that aren’t Scottish) so it’s interesting to see a robot built to play one. Of course, your music-playing robot might be able to make music with something that’s not generally considered a musical instrument at all. And if none of these suit your needs, you can always build your own purpose-built semi-robotic instrument as well.

How do you make a robot hand? If you are [Robimek], you start with some plastic spiral tubing, some servo motors, and some fishing line. Oh, and you also need an old glove.

The spiral tubing (or pipe, if you prefer) is cut in a hand-like shape and fused together with adhesive. The knuckle joints are cut out to allow the tubing to flex at that point. The fishing line connects the fingertips to the servo motors.

The project uses an Arduino to drive the servos, although you could do the job with any microcontroller. Winding up the fishing line contracts the associated finger. Reeling it out lets the springy plastic pipe pull back to its original position.The glove covers the pipes and adds a realistic look to the hand.

Granted, this is probably more practical as a display piece than a working hand. We’d like to put it in our next Halloween project. We’ve seen some simple hand builds before, but the glove is a nice touch. For some reason, many of our robot hand projects like to make rude gestures. You can see a video of [Robimek]’s hand working below.

How do you make a robot hand? If you are [Robimek], you start with some plastic spiral tubing, some servo motors, and some fishing line. Oh, and you also need an old glove.

The spiral tubing (or pipe, if you prefer) is cut in a hand-like shape and fused together with adhesive. The knuckle joints are cut out to allow the tubing to flex at that point. The fishing line connects the fingertips to the servo motors.

The project uses an Arduino to drive the servos, although you could do the job with any microcontroller. Winding up the fishing line contracts the associated finger. Reeling it out lets the springy plastic pipe pull back to its original position.The glove covers the pipes and adds a realistic look to the hand.

Granted, this is probably more practical as a display piece than a working hand. We’d like to put it in our next Halloween project. We’ve seen some simple hand builds before, but the glove is a nice touch. For some reason, many of our robot hand projects like to make rude gestures. You can see a video of [Robimek]’s hand working below.

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