Institute for Physical AI @ BMI · a demonstration
You never tell it the shape. Yet one squeeze fits a circle, a square, and a wedge — each held at many points, evenly. There is one idea behind that, and it is the deepest one in the whole series: the body itself does the computation. Watch the same grip meet three different shapes. The source runs the real soft-finger model, so it cannot lie to you.
Provenance. Morphological computation: control work done by the body's mechanics instead of a controller. Each finger is a constant-curvature soft actuator driven by one input; where it meets an object it is projected onto the surface, so the contact set redistributes itself to match the shape — a circle, a box, a wedge — with no per-shape command. A rigid pinch makes two contacts and must plan its grasp; the soft hand makes many, evenly, and plans nothing. Every contact computed by the open soft core. The 3D model is illustrative; the numbers are exact.