Shadow Robotics
You remember seeing robots on TV. Not the SCI-FI ones, I mean the real ones, the ones that keep popping up in documentaries about the future. They are rubbish aren’t they!
Something really cool is happening now. There’s this company that makes a robotic hand, but instead of servos at the joints, or stepping motors pulling on wires, they’ve created robotic muscles. As far as I can see, they’re based on compressed air filling elongated balloons, deforming them causing tension on wires along the surface. Effectively what a muscle does chemically, sans the balloon and air. This should create a very nimble system, and with the correct control software a highly versatile hand.
OK you’ve seen the problem. Control software, that’s got to be tricky. Do they use nerve feedback? Still, in us humans that still only half of the story, as we mostly use visual feedback (not always, I know). I remember a story once about a man that lost all feeling due to an infection, he could only feel temperature. Suddenly with no nerve feedback is was effectively paralyzed, since his brain could not confirm nor gauge any action. Amazingly he fought this condition, and against the odds tought himself to move again using only visual feedback…
The robotic hand here DOES have tactile sensors, but I am sure that can effectively be augmented with visual feedback. I am sure the technologies exist to analyse and understand regular shapes in video feeds. In fact I once wrote such a system, albeit rather low budget. So, could we using a camera, and goal driven software, give that hand more autonomy?
Oh well, maybe I am just dreaming. Check their site here.
Shadow Robot Company, I love what you are doing. Are you hiring? 
