Universal Robotic Gripper

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Graduate student John Amend, left, and associate professor
Hod Lipson with the universal robotic gripper.
(Credit: Robert Barker/University Photography)

A question may have flashed in your mind, What's a robotic gripper.....??!! Go on reading you will come to know...:)

First, look at your hand, can you see how amazing machine our hand is..??!! It can grab anything in this world. Its a piece of perfection. Robotics is nothing but trying to replicate or design such masterpieces of nature.

Robotic arms to work as a human arm are being created but there many limitations.These cant grab everything. But this latest "Robotic Gripper" is the most advanced and works in a very similar way and it can grab nearly everything...!!

Traditional robotics arm designs are more like a human hand but the researchers from Cornell University, University of Chicago and iRobot have gone beyond such designs and created a very unique and versatile design using, everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon...!!!!

This universal gripper as the researchers like to call it, is a work of Lipson, Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago, and Chris Jones at iRobot Corp.

Now let me tell you how it works and what is the significance of that coffee and balloon......
everyday party balloon filled with ground coffee -- any variety will do -- is attached to a robotic arm. The coffee-filled balloon presses down and deforms around the desired object, and then a vacuum sucks the air out of the balloon, solidifying its grip. When the vacuum is released, the balloon becomes soft again, and the gripper lets go.

What Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science says regarding the universal gripper is,"This is one of the closest things we've ever done that could be on the market tomorrow".

yes.. he is absolutely right and the future applications of this robotic arm may be limitless..!

• it can be used in military to dismantle explosive devises or to move potentially dangerous objects
• These robotics arms can be used in factories.
• on the feet of a robot that could walk on walls
• on prosthetic limbs

Think about it there are many more of its applications....