The robotic gripper conforms to the shape of the item it is lifting.
Here's how it works: An everyday party balloon filled with ground
coffee -- any variety will do -- is attached to a robotic arm. The
coffee-filled balloon presses down and deforms around the desired
object, and then a vacuum sucks the air out of the balloon, solidifying
its grip. When the vacuum is released, the balloon becomes soft again,
and the gripper lets go.
Coffee, Jaeger said, is an example of a particulate material, which is characterized by large aggregates of individually solid particles. Particulate materials have a so-called "jamming transition," which turns their behavior from fluidlike to solidlike when the particles can no longer slide past each other.
This phenomenon is familiar to coffee drinkers who have ever bought vacuum-packed coffee -- hard as a brick until the package is unsealed.
"What is particularly neat with the gripper is that here we have a case where a new concept in basic science provided a fresh perspective in a very different area -- robotics -- and then opened the door to applications none of us had originally thought about," Jaeger said.
Eric Brown, a postdoctoral researcher, and Nick Rodenberg, a physics undergraduate, worked with Jaeger on characterizing the basic mechanisms that enable the gripping action. Prototypes of the gripper were built and tested by Lipson and Cornell graduate student John Amend, as well as at iRobot.
Sponsers of this project.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place
objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing
challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell, the
University of Chicago and iRobot Corp. have created a versatile gripper
using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon, bypassing
traditional designs based on the human hand and fingers.!!!!
Now this seems quite interesting..?!!!
let me take u behind the curtains
let me take u behind the curtains
How the stuff works??
Coffee, Jaeger said, is an example of a particulate material, which is characterized by large aggregates of individually solid particles. Particulate materials have a so-called "jamming transition," which turns their behavior from fluidlike to solidlike when the particles can no longer slide past each other.
This phenomenon is familiar to coffee drinkers who have ever bought vacuum-packed coffee -- hard as a brick until the package is unsealed.
"What is particularly neat with the gripper is that here we have a case where a new concept in basic science provided a fresh perspective in a very different area -- robotics -- and then opened the door to applications none of us had originally thought about," Jaeger said.
Eric Brown, a postdoctoral researcher, and Nick Rodenberg, a physics undergraduate, worked with Jaeger on characterizing the basic mechanisms that enable the gripping action. Prototypes of the gripper were built and tested by Lipson and Cornell graduate student John Amend, as well as at iRobot.
Sponsers of this project.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
0 Comments