Sunday, September 29, 2024

Image Credits: EPFL (screenshot)

Sure, you've seen videos of robots. Maybe even videos of robot hands. But what about a robot hand that can detach from its arm, crawl forward, and grab objects?

Well now you can, thanks to a research paper that debuted at IEEE's International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Rotterdam this week. Brian Heater notes that the stated goal was less about being creepy and more about demonstrating how robot designs could look beyond nature for inspiration.

The team behind the paper and demo boasted about a deep learning model with "significantly advanced dexterous manipulation techniques for multi-fingered hand grasping" — but they also admitted you've probably seen similar nightmare fuel in horror movies.

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Savannah

A displaced startup incubator returns to Sudan: Annie Njanja tells the story of how Savannah Innovation Labs founder Yousif Yahya was forced to flee to Egypt after the outbreak of civil war — but now he's rebuilt operations in Cairo and eastern Sudan. Read more

Index Ventures is growing its team in NYC: Good news for New York startups? Index partner Shardul Shah tells Rebecca Szkutak that the firm plans to hire three or four new team members in the next year: "For a venture fund, that's hypergrowth." Read more

The best iPad apps for productivity: While I mostly just use my iPad to read the news and play games, Aisha Malik explains that I could be doing so much more by using apps like Goodnotes, TickTick, and Forest (which, in my defense, I already use on my iPhone). Read more

What else we're reading

📕 The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is an invaluable resource, allowing anyone to excavate web pages as they existed two or five or 15 years ago. But Wired writes that recent legal battles pose an existential threat to the nonprofit. Read more

📕 Also, Casey Newton, author of Platformer, celebrates four years of one of the tech world's best newsletters by looking back at what he's learned since leaving Substack. Read more