Harvard engineers develop a tentacle robot that can grab fragile objects [VIDEO]
(Screenshot / YouTube / Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences https://bit.ly/3N6nelj)
A team of Harvard University engineers has developed a tentacle grip for robots.
They are hollow tubes with an asymmetrical design that allows them to twist when air is supplied and to grip objects of various shapes.
For humans, grabbing objects is a simple automatized task that we do without thinking.
But in fact, in order to capture an object, we analyze its size, shape, and we can even guess from its appearance how much it weighs and how hard it is.
Recreating these skills in a robot is very difficult, and many engineering groups around the world are working on it.
And they take a variety of approaches. For example, some of them are trying to teach robots to predict the properties of objects like people.
Others create universal captures that do not require such prediction.
As a rule, this approach turns out to be easier and cheaper to implement, although it may not give the best results.
TENTACLES
That’s exactly the approach the Harvard team led by Robert Wood took.
The engineers decided to create a grip not from a pair of compressible parts, as it’s usual, but a set of many simple and passive elements.
The arm has 12 hollow elastomer tubes, closed on one side and connected to the pump on the other.
The peculiarity of these tubes lies in the fact that their structure is not perfectly round: on the one hand, the wall is made thicker.
Normally this is imperceptible, but when the pump begins to pump air into them, this asymmetry causes the tube to bend and twist around the object.
In addition, the tubes can twist around or push against each other, increasing the chance of a successful grip.
One such tube, as a rule, is not enough to grab an object, especially if there are no cavities in it.
But because there are 12 of them, the manipulator effectively grabs objects of different shapes and with different types of surfaces.
And to release the object, it is enough to remove excess pressure from the tubes by turning off the pneumatic pump.
Sources:
- PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2209819119
- Harvard University: https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/tentacle-robot-can-gently-grasp-fragile-objects
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