How a character from ‘The Addams Family’ is shaping the future of robotics

Robotic hands usually come bolted to the wrist of a mechanical arm, waiting for their humanoid owners to move them over to whatever knob or valve needs turning. However, at ETH Zürich’s Soft Robotics Lab, a group of roboticists decided to get rid of the body, designing a self-contained hand that crawls across surfaces, balances its own weight, and manipulates objects using only its five digits. It may seem like an awesome-but-useless robotic recreation of Thing, The Addams Family’s famous dis...