Mobilimb, An Attachable Articulating Robotic Finger That Greatly Enhances Mobile Device Capabilities

Mobilimb Movement

A consortium of French researchers, Marc Teyssier (Sorbonne HCI Group, Gilles Bailly (ISIR -Sorbonne Université), Catherine Pelachaud (ISIR -Sorbonne Université) and Eric Lecolinet (Telecom ParisTech – Université Paris Saclay), have created the Mobilimb. The Mobilimb is an attachable, intuitive, articulating robotic digit that enhances the function, movement and haptic capabilities of mobile devices.

MobiLimb is a new shape-changing component with a compact form factor that can be deployed on mobile devices. It is a small 5 DoF serial robotic manipulator that can be easily added to (or removed from) existing mobile devices (smartphone, tablet). In the spirit of human augmentation, which aims at overcoming human body limitations by using robotic devices, our approach aims at overcoming mobile device limitations (static, passive, motionless) by using a robotic limb.

The team will be presenting their impressive findings at the 31st ACM User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) Symposium in October 2018.

Ergonomy Mobilimb

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Mobilimb

Mobilimb Plug

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Reactive Expression Mobilimb

grasp

Light Extension

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.