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Balloon + Coffee Grounds = Robot Hands

Feb 7, 2011 07:53 PM

Pinball arcade with multiple machines and players engaged in games.

Inspired by Cornell's new, innovative robotic gripper (a sort of shape-shifting balloon hand), Steve Norris of Norris Labs decided to go DIY and make his own home-brewed replica at a lower cost.

Balloons, a blue funnel, a measuring scoop, and a container of original ground coffee on a gray background.

"I constructed my own version of the Cornell University Universal Gripper using parts that I had lying around my lab. This includes the CrustCrawler SG6-UT Robotic Arm, a Yost Engineering ServoCenter controller, a Reynolds Handi-Vac, and a balloon filled with coffee grounds."

It works like this: the gripper employs a technique called "jamming", in which a balloon filled with coffee grounds acts as a malleable "hand", capable of lifting a wide variety of objects, "from a car's shock absorber to a raw egg" (read more here).

Robotic arm with a camera and gripping mechanism on a green surface.

Amazing. Norris, please, make us a HowTo video.

In the gallery below: the first video shows Norris' version, the second video shows the Cornell original.

More shots of Norris' copy:

A black cat sitting beside a robotic arm dispensing food into a bowl.

Robotic arm with a gripping mechanism on a work surface.

Robotic arm holding scissors above a blue object.

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