While small minds expend effort trying to create anthropomorphic robot hands, there is actually a ridiculously large design space for "end effectors" that don't look or work anything like the paws of puny Carbon-based units.
This summer researchers at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) demonstrate an interesting gripper that looks like a rose blossom [1]. Cool!
The idea is that a soft rubber sock-like membrane is designed to fold up like a rose blossom when the bottom is rotate. I.e., the smooth membrane buckles into a tight form like a blossom closing, and opens like a blossom blooming. Very neat.
The gripper gently "embraces" the object, and, literally enfolds it. This process is driven by a single, simple rotary actuator at the bass, plus a little suction. This simple design is obviously scalable, and they show that it is very durable and reliable.
The demonstration uses cameras to visually control the gripper, but the researchers note that, in principle, the membrane can haptically sense what it is embracing.
If I understand correctly, the key design feature is to mold dots into the membrane which cause a desired pattern of folding when twisted.
And it even looks cool!
Very nice work! (You had me at "embrace" !)
- Son Tien Bui, Shinya Kawano, and Van Anh Ho}, ROSE: Rotation-based Squeezing Robotic Gripper toward Universal Handling of Objects, in Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems. 2023: Daegu. https://www.roboticsproceedings.org/rss19/p090.html
Robot Wednesday
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