Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
Technocrats like Elon Musk have been saying for years that personal robot servants are just around the corner, as he has even boldly predicted that everyone will soon own their own personal robot servant, for only about $35,000.00 as he plans to transform his Tesla automobile company into a company that mass produces personal robots.
But how realistic is this techno-prophecy? We see videos online of what humanoid robots can allegedly do, but where are these human robots in real life? Why doesn’t Elon Musk have one following him around all the time, especially with his many media appearances, if they are so close to introducing a mass-produced inexpensive robot that everyone can purchase?
Well, it turns out that the one part of a humanoid robot that so far has baffled those in robotics, are the hands, which need to work like human hands just to do common household chores that a robot servant would have to routinely perform.
I have asked Dr. John Gideon Hartnett, a PhD physicist and a Creation Scientist, to look into this, and what he reports about the incredible design of human hands will probably astound you, and help you to see that our human hands that are designed by God are beyond the reach of man and technology to replicate.
Hands Down the Creator’s Human Hands Beat Artificial Robotics Hands
Human hands exhibit unparalleled complexity and dexterity, revealing the mastery of their Creator. Despite advancements in robotics, replicating the nuanced movements and strength of human hands remains a significant challenge. Companies like Proception are striving to develop robotic hands, yet authentic human hand functionality remains unmatched, highlighting the intricacies of divine design.
by Dr. John Gideon Hartnett
BibleScienceForum.com [1]
Human hands, with four fingers and an opposable thumb, are a truly amazing and unique creation of the Master Craftsman. His design surpasses all that has been developed by humans in their quest for artificial hands on artificial humans.
Even with modern space-age science and engineering and the availability of the existing human hands, copies of them on humanoid robots built with motors, sensors, wires and bearings remains one of the biggest challenges in the robotics world.
On Friday,we reported on [2] Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program, which may fall well short of Elon Musk’s ambitious goal to pump out 5,000 robots by the end of the year.
It turns out the robots’ hands are among the big factors holding up production. In fact, some Optimus robots that are mostly complete have been sitting unused at a Tesla facility because they don’t have hands or lower forearms, we reported. Musk deserves some sympathy. Five-fingered hands are notoriously difficult for roboticists to get right, and many robotics companies steer clear of them, settling for simple pinchers instead.
To see why, consider the number of joints in a human hand. A hand and wrist can perform about 27 different movements (in robotics-speak, that’s 27 “degrees of freedom”). To put that in perspective, a robotic arm is considered pretty agile even if it has as few as seven degrees of freedom.
All those degrees of freedom add up to trouble for the roboticists designing the hands. More joints require separate motors to move them, and the motors need to be powerful enough to enable the robot to do useful work. For example, the humanoid robots of 1-year-old startup Foundation can carry up to 45 pounds using their hands and arms. Still, like many other robot hands, Foundation’s are not strong enough to pinch and unscrew a bottle cap, according to someone familiar with the company. [my emphases added]
Why Hands Are a Handful for Tesla’s Humanoid Robots, TheInformation.com [3]
A robotic hand engineering specialist admitted the following:
“99.5% of work is done by hands,” said Jay Li, who worked on hand sensors for Tesla’s Optimus line before he co-founded Proception in September to develop robotic hands.
“The industry has been so focused on the human form, like how they walk, how they move around, how they look,” he noted. But humanoid companies have overlooked the importance of hands, he said. Hands are hard to get right. Think about the mix of pressure and deftness it takes to peel an orange (and not mash it to a pulp in the process).
The San Francisco-based Proception is developing a glove embedded with sensors that people can wear while they perform their jobs. This data will train the models that power its hands to operate autonomously. The company has already received interest in ordering its hands from multiple AI labs and plans to make its first sales in the fourth quarter of this year, said Li. Eventually, it expects to make the whole human robot, Li said.
These efforts underscore the steep challenge of making robots that have the physical dexterity and mental responsiveness of humans. Coordinating the movement of many joints at once to turn a knob is hard for robots, as is picking up and using tools, which can require a flexible palm, notes Stark.
The next time you see a company release a video of a humanoid robot, watch the hands. [my emphases added]
The Startups Developing Robot Hands; OpenAI’s Revenue Hopes, TheInformation.com [4]
Watch this YouTube video from Proception.ai
This gives you some idea of what 27 degrees of freedom means. The dexterity of human hands are evidence of the Creator. He created them that we might build and labour to feed ourselves and our families and those in need.
28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
Ephesians 4:28 NIV
Any human copies will always be a poor imitation of the Creator’s original design. He built us from scratch; weaving all the components together in the womb.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. [my emphases added]
Psalms 139:13-16 NIV
No evolution was ever involved. From Creation magazine December 1990 [5]
What does the development of hands and feet in the human embryo tell us, then? In a six-week-old, 11-millimetre-long embryo, one can already see the regions from which the limbs will develop. Only one week later, the five-fold digitization of the hand is clearly visible, even though the feet are still like paddles. It takes another week for the feet to ‘catch up’ in this regard.
At 15 millimetres one already can see the later function of these limbs mirrored in their early movements. Motions of the upper limbs are ‘hugging’, whereas the lower limb movements are of a pushing, bracing nature. There is never the slightest hint of any climbing function.
At three months, the embryo, in spite of only weighing about 30 grams (little more than one ounce) can already make a fist and oppose the thumb. Its feet are spread-eagled, but in contrast to the hands, they never make any gripping motions.
It has been shown that at 16 weeks an embryo is able to grip a small rod firmly. At six months it can grip it so tightly as to be able to be lifted up by it. At this time the foot is a fully formed standing/walking structure (although to mother at this time ‘kicking’ is probably the word that most readily springs to mind!).
The long refuted notion that human embryos pass through different stages of evolution in their embryonic development in the womb with webbed toes and fingers is laughable. No such thing is observed.
At three months, the foot looks identical to that of a new-born baby. Human beings do not give any sign in their embryonic development of anything other than an upright posture, two-legged walking, and a freely opposable, rotatable hand.
How are they going to implement anything like this even just in the imitation of the human hand?
The project to build the hand by Proception.ai requires training the Large Language Model (LLM) AI on real human hands via a hand with many embedded sensors.
Man’s desire to create in his own image leads to merely a bad copy of what the Master Creator already created.
These creations of man are only copies of those the Master Creator already has created. There is nothing novel there, only a copy. But even to achieve the copy is a task not yet fully appreciated by most in the robotics world.
The robot hands rely on sensors for pressure and temperature, motors and actuators and a myriad of connecting wires. And these thousands of sensors must be connected to a brain that can control all these movements.
Mankind has made a lot of tools, but none of them rival the usefulness and versatility of the human hand. Its structure and design give evidence of God’s creativity and allows us to do a wide variety of tasks—like typing, eating, and building skyscrapers.
ICR.org [6]
Watch this short 2 minute video!
The finger design follows a Fibonacci sequence. The sum of the lengths of the first two bones in each finger equals the length of the next one. And this fact is very noteworthy: “A large amount of your brain is dedicated to controlling hand muscles. This means that grip control combinations are nearly infinite, and remarkably versatile.”
This is one of the biggest problems with AI. They can NEVER have all the data, because data is infinite, flowing from the mind of God, who can create anything new He wants to at any time.
Allowing for every combination of the 27 different movements (degrees of freedom) of the human hand means that there are of order 27! = 1028 combinations that the brain must control.
That number, 27 factorial is 10 octillion, which, as you can see, is an extremely large number. But no doubt some combinations are not possible when certain movements are performed.
Even so, I would think the number surely will be at least a quintillion. (See here [7].)
To get this right robotics makers will need the power of a supercomputer equal to the human brain to manipulate their artificial human hands, which we know is impossible. They would need to know the mind of God.
God has already done the job with the human design. And no wires are needed. Yet there are a myriad of sensors and muscles packed into the arms and hands to perform all the hand movements.
10 fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10 ESV
Of course God does not have physical flesh-and-blood hands. Scriptures like this shows us the importance of the hands; here used as a metaphor for God’s righteousness and strength.
Our hands are one of the most important human characteristics that God has created to separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, as well as AI.
In January 2016 a paper1 in a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal PLOS ONE credits ‘the Creator’ for human hand design but the journal was forced to retract it after an outcry.
Why? Because you cannot have the Creator being credited in a secular science journal. Ironically PLOS stands for Public Library of Science.
A team of four Chinese researchers published a paper that dealt with everyday topics such as how human hands grasp objects, and showed these actions, that we take for granted, require “complex biomechanical architecture”. But this would hardly have been controversial if not for its ‘unfortunate’ use of some extremely taboo language: the researchers in multiple places referred to the Creator.
The paper’s Abstract states:
The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way.
The Introduction includes:
Thus, hand coordination affords humans the ability to flexibly and comfortably control the complex structure to perform numerous tasks. Hand coordination should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention.
My added emphases is in bold text. See creation.com [8] for a full discussion.
In summary on this paper, the science showed the amazing design of human hands and gave credit where credit is due.
But the Satanic atheistic misotheistic journal editors retracted the paper not based on the science, but based on their prior held belief that all life evolved from pond scum over billions of years. And the suggestion is that human hands are the evolutionary outcome as we descended from the trees.
But recent research by evolutionists challenges the view that humans diverged from chimp-like ancestors with hands adapted to swinging from tree limbs. See article on AnswersinGenesis.org. [9]
God’s designs for hands include primates both extant and extinct adapted to many different habitats and lifestyles. Such variation does not require an evolutionary explanation. Animal species do vary but only within their created kinds. The diversity documented in the study is consistent with this fact. Despite varying degrees of common designs shared with some apes, the human hand with its fully opposable thumb remains unique.
After the alleged millions of years of evolution the human hand with its fully opposable thumb remains unique. So now the engineers in the robotics world plan on doing what Darwin could not.
Hands down, the design and operation of the hands created by God, especially the human hands with opposable thumbs, and precise pincher precision, beat any robotics thus far.
Original Article [1].
References
- Ming-Jin Liu, Cai-Hua Xiong , Le Xiong, Xiao-Lin Huang, Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living, PLOS ONE, 5 January 2016 | doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146193. PLOS = Public Library of Science.
About the Author
Dr. Hartnett is an Australian scientist who holds a PhD in physics from The University of Western Australia, and has gained international recognition for developing the world’s most precise clock, the cryogenic sapphire oscillator (CSO). (Source [10].)
His partial bio:
Dr John Gideon Hartnett is an accomplished Australian physicist, cosmologist, and noted biblical creationist.
A PhD holder from The University of Western Australia (UWA), Hartnett has served at both UWA and the University of Adelaide, contributing to over 200 scientific papers.
He was a founding director of a successful startup that has commercialized his research on ultra-stable cryogenic ‘clocks’.
He’s known internationally as a speaker on biblical creation, and has written extensively on the subject, especially from an astrophysics and cosmology perspective.
Hartnett also writes popular science pieces, frequently critiquing man-made climate change and green energy.
Previous articles by Dr. Hartnett on Health Impact News:
Tucker Carlson Believes Aliens are Demons Described in the Old Testament [11]
Understanding UFOs: Military, Interstellar, and Interdimensional Insights [12]
Abiogenic Deep Origin of Hydrocarbons Disputes the Climate Change Cult [13]
Coal: God’s Gift to Humanity for Cheap Energy, or Climate Destroying “Fossil” Fuel? [14]
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