Jelly Grippers, Robot Hands

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. .... ' 

Origami Inspired Grip

 Enjoy the inspiration of origami in design and modeling interaction. 

An origami-inspired robotic fingertip with shape-morphing capabilities   by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

To perform tasks that involve moving or handling objects, robots should swiftly adapt their grasp and manipulation strategies based on the properties of these objects and the environment surrounding them. Most robotic hands developed so far, however, have a fixed and limiting structure; thus, they can perform a limited number of movements and can only grasp specific types of objects.

Researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have recently developed a robotic fingertip that can change its shape and switch across three different configurations, which could allow it to grasp a broader variety of objects. This fingertip's unique design, outlined in a paper presented at this year's IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), is inspired by origami, the renowned Japanese art of paper folding .... "