New robotic technology offers potential for soft and gentle grip

New soft gripper technology has been developed that uses electroadhesion to provide a softer and more subtle grip than current devices allow.

Created by engineers at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the gripper utilises flexible electrode flaps that act like a thumb-index duo, allowing it to pick up fragile objects of varying shapes and stiffness, such as eggs, water balloons or paper.

When the voltage is turned on, the electrodes bend towards the object, imitating muscle function. The tip of the electrodes then act like fingertips that gently conform to the shape of the object, gripping on to it with electrostatic forces.

These electrodes can carry 80 times their own weight and do not need to be pre-programmed with information about the object's shape. Other soft grippers are unable to do this, and often struggle with handling flat or deformable objects.

The technology could prove useful in the development of prosthetic hands, or robotic appendages for use in food handling and space exploration.

Jun Shintake, a doctoral student at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, said: "This is the first time that electroadhesion and soft robotics have been combined together to grasp objects."