roboticgripper
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A lizard-inspired robot gripper may solve our space-junk problems
Space junk is a huge problem in orbit. Over 500,000 pieces of debris are currently orbiting the Earth at up to 17,500 miles per hour, and we haven't yet figured out how to clean it up. But engineers at Stanford may have made a breakthrough: They've designed a robotic gripper based on gecko's feet that works in zero-g. The end goal is to use it to clean up space junk.
University of Chicago, Cornell researchers develop universal robotic gripper
Robotic hands are usually just that -- hands -- but some researchers from the University of Chicago and Cornell University (with a little help from iRobot) have taken a decidedly different approach for their so-called universal robotic gripper. As you can see above, the gripper is actually a balloon that can conform to and grip just about any small object, and hang onto it firmly enough to pick it up. What's the secret? After much testing, the researchers found that ground coffee was the best substance to fill the balloon with -- to grab an object, the gripper simply creates a vacuum in the balloon (much like a vacuum-sealed bag of coffee), and it's then able to let go of the object just by releasing the vacuum. Simple, but it works. Head on past the break to check it out in action. [Thanks, Jeremy]
