Soft robotic gripper uses vacuum pressure and a beanbag to move objects

A robotic grasper with fewer moving parts is hitting the market, and it doesn’t even have fingers. The Versaball relies on jamming transition to pick up and move objects with a minimum of hassle.

Soft robotic gripper uses vacuum pressure and a beanbag to move objects

Seen this article and immediately thought of the Daleks manipulator arm!





Exterminate! Exterminate!

Guess yesterdays science fiction really in today's science fact! LoL

reply to post by andy06shake


Oh boy. I can foresee some icky applications for this coming from the porn industry...


Mom: "Everything OK in there, son?"
Son: "Yeah ma! I'm just uh studying up on 'jamming transition...' Be out in a minute..."

reply to post by 35Foxtrot


That was my first thought when I saw "soft robotic gripper". In fact, I thought this would be another thread about the robotic gripper I saw the other day that was really for that purpose.

reply to post by andy06shake


Pretty cool stuff!

I worked as a longshoreman for over 32 yrs. prior to my retirement. During that time I witnessed what I would call a true metamorphosis when it comes to the evolution of lifting and/or hoisting technologies and the advent of vacuum powered lifting devices was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing.

When I first began working as a longshoreman, one of the many different cargoes we would handle was rolls of newsprint that were in transit from the paper mills where it was manufactured, to the various regional newspaper printing depts.. Those rolls of newsprint would often weigh as much as 3500 lbs. each and we would hoist them out of the ship's hold two at a time. Well as time went on, all that changed.

By the early 1980s we were utilizing a new hoisting device that could pick up 20 rolls at a time and all it used was vacuum to maintain it's grip on the rolls, it was amazing. Here's a couple of pics of what I'm talking about;




While the use of vacuum to lift things is not new, the dexterity demonstrated in the video by the "Versaball" is in itself, pretty amazing and I'm sure this technology will soon be popping up on assembly lines everywhere. I'll just bet it won't take long for the developers to increase the maximum lifting capacity either.

Thanks for posting, S&F.