Sunday, October 26, 2014

These robots use static electricity to move boxes, fruits, and iPads


Did you know that the same forces that generate static electricity can be strong enough to pick up and move boxes, crates, and other objects? A robot startup named GrabIt is making mechanical "hands" that use electrostatic attraction to gently pick up and transport objects. Powered electrodes, either on the surface of the gripper or on flexible, tentacle-like fingers, generate and maintain powerful attractive forces between nearly any object. In demos, the company has shown its grippers can pick up everything from cans and fruits to iPads, boxes, crates, and sheets of glass, silicon, or fabric.


Grippers are the business end of robots: without them, machines wouldn't be able to pick up or manipulate objects. But it's not easy to pick...


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