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UNSW Sydney engineers drew inspiration from nature to develop a robotic gripper made of soft fabric that acts like an elephant’s trunk. The gripper can grab, pick up and release objects without breaking them. Researchers believe the technology can be widely applied in many areas where fragile objects are collected.
Sectors could include agriculture, food industry, science and resource exploration. The forceps could potentially be used for human rescue operations and also as personal assistance devices. UNSW Medical Robotics Lab Director Dr. Thanh Nho Do so that the forceps can be commercially available in the next 12-16 months. The only caveat to this timeline is that the team must find an industry partner.
I said that the soft cloth gripper is thin, flat and light with the ability to encrypt and retrieve various items even if the item is in a confined empty space. A given example is that the gripper can retrieve a pen inside a tube. The researchers integrated an enhanced real-time force sensor that is said to be 15 times more sensitive than conventional designs and capable of sensing how much grip force is needed to prevent damage to whatever it is handling.
The gripper is equipped with a thermally activated mechanism capable of changing the gripper body from flexible to rigid and vice versa. This ability allows him to grasp and hold objects of various shapes and weights. It is able to work with articles up to 220 times heavier than the mass of the gripper. Dr Do says the new soft pliers represent an improvement over existing designs.
Most soft forceps rely on claws for structures like the human hand with multiple fingers bent inward. These designs make the pliers unsuitable for grasping oddly shaped, heavy or bulky objects. Traditional grippers aren’t even capable of grasping objects smaller or larger than the gripper opening. The technology developed by the research team is easily reproducible at different sizes and volumes using a simple and scalable manufacturing process.
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