Bomb disposal experts in in combat zones throughout the world may be equipped with a handy new device manufactured by a small Islington company to help them tackle the increasing threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

IEDs are responsible for two-thirds of coalition deaths and are widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rich Walker, developer of the device

Rich Walker, the Shadow Robot Company’s technical director, has developed the ‘C6M Smart Motor Hand’, the first robotic device that can carry out all the functions of a human hand.

The Cambridge University maths graduate studied one of the first MAs in Robotics, “taught by the people who invented the subject”.

His robot hand is operated by a glove worn by a soldier and will be used in conjunction with a camera so IEDs can be diffused.
The 3.5kg hand is made up of artificial muscles and tendons; each finger has four movements, the thumb has five and the wrist has two. It even has fingernails.

Walker said: “There are things that you just can’t do without a finger nail like opening the catch of a battery compartment.”

SRC has already sold them to several universities and to NASA, America’s space agency. It has also taken an order from the Ministry of Defence, which wants to experiment with using the hand in the battlefield.

QinetiQ, a large British defence technology company, has talked to SRC about how they could work together since they produce mobile robots and can see scope to mount the C6M onto them.

“We are not working with them directly at the moment but they are a big company with the type of technology which might take advantage us in the future.”

Walker, “traditionally an anarchist”, sometimes finds it strange to think he is developing military hardware but he draws the line between offensive and defensive weapons.

“We are happy to do bomb disposal because we see it as the more civilian side to of what goes on,” he said.

The 6CM and other robots developed by the company have non-military applications. CRC has sold robots to universities developing prosthetics and see their products as providing a way for industry to protect their labour by using robots in “dangerous, difficult, dirty or demeaning” situations.

Walker said: “We want to get these hands into serial production to be used by people doing dangerous tasks whether that’s in the nuclear industry, offshore or submarine - anywhere where humans are at risk.”
The MoD’s Centre for Defence is a Dragon’s Den for technological upstarts like the SRC.

So far £5m has been dished out by the scheme and projects which are deemed suitable to take forward will then enter mass production with the aid of large defence engineering firms like BAE and Boeing.

“To deliver 1000 systems of military grade, three guys in a shed are not going to be able to do that but on the other hand Boeing may not be the right environment to come up with the new idea in the first place,” Walker said.

He is confident his robots will provide tactical advantage to any army and predicts “we are going to see other armies deploying non human systems onto the battle field”.

But he’s also cautious about exaggerating any advantage robotics can provide. Old military theories are “still of importance to the modern infantry commander because actually the matters have not changed very much.

“Weapons and systems have changed but the practical problems of applying a force to meet a goal never changes.”

Is he scared of AI taking over?

“No, not if they have batteries.”