When you look at your phone, there’s probably a dozen things you can think of that would make it a handier experience. Adding a finger, however, is probably not that high on the list. Yet, that’s exactly what Mobilimb would like to do. They have created a finger out of an Arduino microcontroller, a sensor, and five servo motors. The result looks something between a sex toy and a living nightmare.
One of the researchers behind the project, Marc Teyssier, had this to say:
“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 finger has some benefits. It’s a handy phone stand and it can actually crawl towards you if it is just out of reach. On the other side of the equation, it can rub on you and Fein human emotion with its tiny LED face.