It’s called the Goldilocks principle – striking the perfect balance as the namesake did with porridge temperature in the children’s tale. It’s widely used in science, medicine, design, economics and even astrobiology to denote ideal measures or outcomes.
With robotic systems, that balance is between strength and reach versus precision and dexterity. And the L3Harris T7 and T4 robots are the Goldilocks of robotics systems, achieving the right balance of powerful lift strength, unmatched dexterity, precision and reach. The large T7’s manipulator arm is able to lift up to 249-pound (113-kilogram) payloads with ease, with a vertical reach that extends as far as 9.8 feet (3 meters).
Built to enable big robot capability in a compact footprint, the medium-sized T4 provides the best available lift strength and reach for its weight class, lifting up to 121 pounds (55 kilograms) and reaching 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) vertically. The T4’s unique omni-directional and self-righting stabilizers further bolster this capability by enabling lateral stability for tasks that require heavy lifting.
L3Harris’ T4 robot provides impressive lift strength and reach for its weight class while enabling high dexterity.
Functional Strength Through Unrivalled Dexterity
In addition to their powerful lift and reach capabilities, T7 and T4 also provide functional strength with exceptional, human-like dexterity made possible by L3Harris’ unique intuitive haptic controller. The precision and versatility enabled by this controller is especially important for complex explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) missions, not only ensuring operators can pick up heavy explosive threats but gain access to and defeat these threats in hard-to-reach places.
Capable of lifting a 110-pound (50-kilogram) drum from a car trunk or retrieving unexploded artillery rounds, T7 can also easily move its manipulator arm through car windows to reach concealed threats. In addition to navigating narrow spaces such as trains and buses with ease, T4’s sizeable reach enables it to fire disruptors at devices stowed away on high shelves or luggage racks. T4’s manipulator arm is also agile enough to access low places such as the underside of cars or drainage pipes underneath roads to check for explosive threats.
Getting to Grips with Haptic Force Feedback
What really sets the T7 and T4’s manipulator arms apart are their unique force-sensing grippers. Exceedingly strong and robustly designed, the gripper can withstand a lot of abuse while still remaining incredibly adept. It provides high fidelity measurements of the contract forces encountered by the fingers, enabling haptic force feedback to the operator controlling it, allowing them to “feel” what the robot is feeling as it tackles different tasks. Depending on the need, the manipulator arm and gripper can act as anything from a highly dextrous scalpel to a powerful sledgehammer.
To truly gain the benefit of full, end-to-end robotic capability, it’s important to ensure systems achieve the right combination of strength, reach and dexterity aligned with mission requirements. L3Harris’ cutting-edge capability received a lot of interest and proved a significant talking point at Vanguard 2024, an annual capstone experiment hosted in the Arizona desert by the U.S. Army. Learn more about why our T7 and T4 robotic systems are trusted by world-leading EOD experts all over the globe.
