More Details On Jammin’ Robot Gripper
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 29 of October , 2010 at 12:29 am
John wrote in to let us know that Cornell has posted a new video of their “jamming” universal robotic gripper, which I neglected to mention is derived from a collaboration between the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab, the lab of Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago, and iRobot. There’s nothing specific in this new video that we didn’t already know, but watching someone squeeze the gripper in its flexible and rigid states is a very effective way to demonstrate the principle. Also, at the very end, it manages to pick up a flat plastic disc with ease, which is one of the things that it wasn’t supposed to be able to do. Hmm, I guess maybe it does actually do everything.
A few other things worth pointing out: it’s a pretty big step to totally abandon the conventional model for a universal robotic gripper, which is of course the human hand, and instead develop something exotic which is also easy to build simple to operate, and (above all) cheap. They didn’t start out trying to build a gripper, though… This particular application came out of a project to try to create “programmable matter” for DARPA.
And in case you were wondering, they absolutely weren’t kidding about the gripper itself being simply a balloon filled with coffee grounds:
Pretty cool!
Comments (6)
Category: Research
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Comment by quantum_flux
Made Friday, 29 of October , 2010 at 3:18 pm
Nice trick, good to know how to make one of those.
Comment by Del
Made Friday, 29 of October , 2010 at 4:43 pm
“Also, at the very end, it manages to pick up a flat plastic disc with ease, which is one of the things that it wasn’t supposed to be able to do.”
It picks up a small disc with ease because it’s actually grabbing the edges of the disc. It still probably isn’t able to pick up a flat thing that is larger diameter than the gripper balloon.
Comment by Joey1058
Made Saturday, 30 of October , 2010 at 12:06 am
I’m really surprised that thing really is a toy balloon! And what happens if the coffee spills out when the balloon breaks? Why, take a coffee break, of course! *snickers*
Comment by Bill
Made Sunday, 31 of October , 2010 at 6:17 pm
That is truly amazing.
Comment by jd
Made Monday, 13 of December , 2010 at 2:47 pm
combine this with elctro-adhesion and you could truly grip anything
Comment by How To Stop Smoking Weed Forever
Made Saturday, 19 of November , 2011 at 6:01 pm
Really nice design and style and wonderful written content, nothing else we want :D.
