Growing up, we learn to push just hard enough to move a box and to avoid touching a hot pan with our bare hands. Now, a robot hand has been developed that also has these instincts.

The MOTIF Hand, developed by a student team in collaboration with Daniel Seita, a USC Viterbi assistant professor of computer science, is built on the idea of being multimodal—that is, having several sensory abilities. The most prominent of these abilities relate to temperature and force, with built-in sensors for depth, force and temperature allowing the hand to sense and react to these factors.

These capabilities create potential not only for better research involving robotic hands, but they also allow these hands to last longer by avoiding temperature-related damage. Force-related capabilities could also have a surprisingly practical real-world use.

“In factories and other domains, a robot would have to push to get objects into their targets, and that requires measuring some amount of force,” Seita said. “That type of force sensor can help in those cases, just to check that the robot is exerting the right amount of force.

“We haven’t seen people build this type of hand before,” he added.

Hot stuff

The MOTIF Hand builds on the foundation of the LEAP Hand, which was built by a research team at Carnegie Mellon in 2023. MOTIF’s key advancement is the addition of human-like sensory capabilities. This MOTIF Hand, which contains far more accurate human-like features and abilities, could have myriad applications, including in factory work and even cooking or welding, Seita said.

The robot’s ability to sense temperature comes from a thermal camera built into the palm of the hand. Seita and his team of USC Viterbi graduate students aimed to create a hand that would simulate a human understanding of temperature.

“If we’re cooking, we have a pot that’s very hot. We might put our hand near it to check if it’s safe to touch before we actually touch it, to avoid burns and damage,” Seita said. “We wanted that same intuition conveyed into a robot system.”

It’s an intuitive system that requires the hand to be close to the material whose temperature it’s detecting, said Hanyang Zhou, a co-author of the research paper, “The MOTIF Hand: A Robotic Hand for Multimodal Observations with Thermal, Inertial, and Force Sensors,” who recently graduated from the Viterbi School with a master’s in computer science. The paper is published on the arXiv preprint server.

“We were thinking, is it possible in some certain way to get a signal but not touch anything? So, we put an infrared-based camera right in the palm,” he added.

In other words, the MOTIF Hand can detect temperature through this thermal camera without even touching an object—just placing the hand close enough for the camera to examine it does the job.

‘You have to feel it’

The work done by Seita, Zhou and their team was designed to make the process of testing temperature and force feel more natural—in other words, true to human experiences with these things. For example, force is something that humans can’t see, just feel. The MOTIF Hand is designed around the same sensations we use to understand force-related properties, such as an object’s weight, allowing for more life-like robotic reactions to force.

“We as humans cannot distinguish [force] as a vision you have to feel it. But how is that possible for a robot hand?” Zhou asked. “If I don’t know whether a water bottle is full of water, I just flick it. I’ll shake it, right?”

The IMU sensors built into the MOTIF Hand bring this simple test to robotics. The hand, like our own, merely needs to flick or shake an object to determine its weight.

The MOTIF Hand was based on Carnegie Mellon’s LEAP Hand, which was open source. To further advance this sensory technology, Seita and his team have promised to make the MOTIF Hand open-source as well.

“Open-sourcing research advancement is really important to advance the community,” Seita said. “The more people that use our hand, the better it is for research.”

Zhou described the MOTIF Hand’s sensory advancements as a “platform” that he hopes the entire robotics community will build on for the future.

“We should make it easy [and] accessible for more and more research teams, as long as they are interested in such a platform,” Zhou said.

All of the prices above are for a single line paid monthly. Google periodically offers half off and other specials, usually only if you bring your own phone.

Activate Your Chip

Once you’ve picked your plan and signed up, Google will mail out a SIM card. It took a couple of days for my physical SIM to arrive, but I’ll gladly take the slight delay if it saves me from setting foot in a physical carrier store. If you’re using an iPhone, Google Pixel, Samsung phone, or other device that supports eSIM, you can set up Fi with an eSIM instantly.

Once your chip arrives, you’ll need to use a SIM tool to pull out the SIM tray and insert the SIM card into your phone. Then, download the Google Fi app (you’ll need to be on Wi-Fi to do this since your chip won’t connect to the network yet), and follow the steps there. If you’re porting in your old phone number, it may take a little longer. For me, after setting up a new number, Fi was up and running after about 5 minutes. That’s it, you’re done.

I have traveled and lived in rural areas for the past 7 years, and I’ve tried just about every phone and hotspot plan around—none of them are anywhere near this simple. The only one that comes close is Red Pocket Mobile, which I still use in addition to Google Fi. There are cheaper plans out there, but in terms of ease of use and reliability, Fi is hard to beat.

Using Google Fi as a Hotspot

You can use Google Fi as a simple way to add cellular connectivity to any device that accepts a SIM card, like a mobile hotspot. You’ll need to activate your Google Fi SIM card with a phone using the Google Fi app, but once the activation is done, you can put that chip in any device your plan allows. If you go with the Unlimited Plus plan, that means you can put your chip in an iPad, Android tablet, or a 4G/5G mobile hotspot. You are still bound by the 50-gigabyte data limit, though, so make sure you don’t go too crazy with Netflix.

Alternatively, consider ordering a data-only SIM. Google allows you to have up to four if you’re on the Unlimited Premium or Flexible plans, meaning you can keep four gadgets—a spare phone or tablet—connected to the internet. The caveat is that they can’t place phone calls or receive texts. You don’t have to use your phone to activate the SIM first. You can order a data-only SIM in the Plan section of your account, under Devices & subscriptions. If you have an eSIM-only device you want to connect, you can tap Connect your tablet and Fi will offer a QR code you can scan to activate the SIM.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Do I need a Google account? Yes, you do need a Google account to sign up for Google Fi, but you don’t need to be all-in on Google to use Fi. I have an Android phone, and I use Google apps since that’s what we use here at WIRED, but outside of work I do not use any Google services other than Fi, and it still works great.
• Is Google Fi tracking my every move? Yes, but so is your current provider. Google Fi’s terms of service say Google doesn’t sell what’s known as customer proprietary network information—things like call location, details, and features you use—to anyone else.
• I’m traveling and want to use Google Fi abroad. Will that work? Fi’s terms of service require you to activate your service in the US, but after that, in theory, it should work anywhere Fi has partnered with an in-country network. WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu has used Fi in multiple countries while traveling. However, based on feedback from WIRED readers, and reading through travel forums, it seems that most people are being cut off if they’re out of the US for more than a few weeks. I would say don’t plan on using Google Fi to fulfill your digital nomad dreams.

Tips and Tricks

There are several features available through the Google Fi app you might not discover at first. One of my favorites is an old Google Voice feature that allows you to forward calls to any phone you like. This is also possible in Google Fi. All you need to do is add a number to Fi’s forwarding list, and any time you get a call, it will ring both your cell phone and that secondary number—whether it’s a home phone, second cell, or the phone at the Airbnb you’re at. This is very handy in places where your signal strength is iffy—just route the call to a landline. Similarly, it can be worth enabling the Wi-Fi calling feature for times when you have access to Wi-Fi but not a cell signal.

Another feature that’s becoming more and more useful as the number of spam calls I get goes ever upward is call blocking. Android and iOS calling apps can block calls, but that sends the caller directly to voicemail, and you still end up getting the voicemail. Block a call through the Google Fi app, and the callers get a message saying your number has been disconnected or is no longer in service. As far as they know, you’ve changed numbers. To set this up, open the Fi app and look under Privacy & security > Manage contact settings > Manage blocked numbers, and then you can add any number you like to the list. If you change your mind, just delete the listing.

One final thing worth mentioning: I have not canceled my Google Fi service despite switching to Starlink for most of my hotspot needs. Instead, I just suspended my Fi service using the app. That way, should I need it for some reason, I can reactivate it very quickly.

As the company that either invented or popularized the dive watch, the GMT watch, the first water-resistant watch, the first automatic watches, and much more besides, you could hardly downplay Rolex’s influence on watchmaking history. But while its iconic sports watches, like the Submariner, Daytona and GMT-Master are endlessly imitated, Rolex is not seen as a trendsetter, preferring to ignore passing horological fashions. It does its own thing, iterating carefully and minimally on its age-old templates.

Five years ago, however, Rolex introduced a collection so avant-garde that is still influencing creative decisions across the entire watch industry, and it did so in one of its least-heralded models: the Oyster Perpetual. The idea was so simple that we’ve barely noticed it become the industry norm: Instead of slowly rolling out new dial colours one at a time over a period of years—which was standard watch world behavior until that point—Rolex launched a whole set of colored dials in a complementary palette all at once.

They were bright, bold and almost childlike in their purity: coral red, green, turquoise, pink and yellow. Rolex-watchers immediately hailed them as a tribute to the so-called Stella dial Day-Date watches of the late 1970s and 1980s—equally bright and unexpected, and evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. But there was something more basic, more essential and, at least theoretically, more attainable about the Oyster Perpetual collection.

It sparked imitators left, right and center—and still does. At last week’s Geneva Watch Days 2025, Zenith’s collaboration with Swiss furniture-maker USM would qualify as a textbook example: a full set of bold, block-colour dials in otherwise traditional stainless steel sports watches.

Earlier this year, Oris’s Big Crown Pointer Date hit a similar note. In 2023, arch-rival Omega debuted a collection of Seamaster Aqua Terra models with similar hues to Rolex’s opening salvo; other mid-level brands including Breitling and TAG Heuer have all created multi-colored families of stainless steel, time-only round watches in a similar mold.