Electrostatic forces give gentle touch

摘要

Researchers in Switzerland have developed a soft robotic gripper that uses electrostatic forces to pick up objects of arbitrary shape and stiffness. The gripper from the Ecole Polytechnique Federate de Lausanne (EPFL) could be used, for example, in the food and drink industries, where fruit and vegetables have unique and unpredictable shapes and sizes, and must not be damaged as they are moved around. This makes packing and handling difficult to automate, and necessitates human involvement, which pushes up costs. Soft robotics - making robotic manipulators out of plastics and gels - is a potential solution for the development of automated equipment that can handle this problem. Soft robots mimic some aspect of human physiology to gently grip and move items while conforming to their shape, exerting enough force to take the item's weight without damaging it.