Bizarre robotic finger for smartphones can pat your hand

A French team of researchers decided to give their smartphones a little more “heart” and developed a way for them to interact with their owners that might be a little weird: it's a robotic finger that connects to the device via the input. USB that can not only move to pat the user's hand, but also be used to move the phone in place.

Oddly enough, the project is nonetheless interesting because it leads us to imagine a host of other possibilities in terms of accessories that could be plugged into the USB port.

Using five servomotors and one Arduino microcontroller, MobiLimb can be programmed to react to what happens on the smartphone. Imagine the little finger poking your hand when you get a message notification, for example. In addition, it may have other functions, such as serving as a joystick or even as a stand to keep the phone standing on a flat surface.

Oddly enough, the project is nonetheless interesting because it leads us to imagine a host of other possibilities in terms of accessories that could be plugged into a smartphone's USB port and used for a multitude of things. In the meantime, we can take advantage of this bizarre finger that comes dragging the phone around or that bizarre caress in our hand.

Bizarre robotic finger for smartphones can pat your hand via TecMundo