A project intended to develop advanced prosthetics for military amputees may ultimately eliminate the need to put military personnel at risk to begin with, if engineers at Telefactor Robotics have their way. The company specializes in advanced robotic vision systems and dexterous manipulation solutions that provide human-like capabilities in remote or otherwise hazardous areas. “Robotic arms typically terminate in rigid two-fingered pinchers,” says Matt Kozlowski, vice-president of engineering at Telefactor. “We’re replacing that with a conformal finger system that can basically pick up an amorphous object with little or no additional cognitive load on the user.” They offer more than just hands, however. The full Contineo Dexterity Solutions product line includes wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints with degrees of freedom that mimic those of the human body, effectively performing “hands-on” tasks as if a human were physically there (see figure 1). With the aid of innovative architectures and small DC motors from MICROMO, Telefactor subsystems bring new capabilities to robotics in applications ranging from security and defense to industrial manufacturing, mining, and even agriculture.