New ways for robots to attach.
This robotic tentacle gripper is gentle, practical, and terrifying
The gripper designed by engineers from Harvard side-steps the challenge of recreating the human hand by throwing a bunch of tentacles at the problem
By JAMES VINCENT, Oct 26, 2022, 11:25 AM EDT
Hands, man, they’re a tough gig to beat. Four fingers? An opposable thumb? A design classic. But that’s never stopped scientists from trying to surpass what nature perfected. And their latest attempt to out-fing humanity’s fingers is pleasingly terrifying.
The engineers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) that designed this jellyfish-inspired gripper don’t seem to have blessed it with a name. So, in the interest of sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, I’m going to call it... Mr. Jelly Hands, without making any real effort to justify that choice.
Mr. Jelly Hands is an attempt to solve the ever-vexing gripper problem in robotics: that is, the challenge of designing something that grabs as well as a human can. The problem is not only that our hands are mechanically complex and thus expensive to replicate in gears and levers but that the software controlling them is — despite your tendency to drop your coffee mug — incredibly well-tuned and capable of all sorts of dextrous movement. .... '
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