Soft robotic gripper has strength and dexterity for lifting delicate objects

Robotics designers have a tough job in creating lifting "hands" for robotic machines and devices that have the strength to lift items that are heavy while having the ability to handle delicate objects without breaking them. Using electroadhesion, the principal that allows a balloon to stick to a wall after you rub it on your hair, gripping devices for robots may have been changed significantly.

EPFL scientists have invented a new soft gripper that uses electroadhesion in its operation. The gripper has flexible electrode flaps that are like a thumb-index gripper that can pick up fragile and arbitrary shapes like an egg, water balloon, or paper.

The gripper has potential uses in space, the food industry, and in prosthetic devices. The electronic flaps act as a gripper and are stretchable. The design imitates muscle flexion and soft touch. The flexible gripper is able to lift up to 100 times its own weight.

Other soft grippers in use today are pneumatically controlled and often fail at picking up fragile items like eggs unless the gripper is told the shape of the object before. Current grippers are unable to pick up flat or deformable objects. The flaps of the new gripper are made of five layers of stretched elastomer layer between outer layers of silicone.

SOURCE: ACTU