{"id":337377,"date":"2017-04-01T23:15:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T15:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1464857"},"modified":"2017-04-01T23:15:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T15:15:29","slug":"how-marine-biology-inspired-soft-robotics-industrial-grippers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/how-marine-biology-inspired-soft-robotics-industrial-grippers\/","title":{"rendered":"How marine biology inspired Soft Robotics\u2019 industrial grippers"},"content":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Valentine\u2019s Day at\u00a0Soft Robotics<\/a>\u00a0in Cambridge, Mass. a\u00a0staff member places heart-shaped marshmallow Peeps on a conveyor belt. A\u00a0mechanical arm snatches them up, one by one, setting\u00a0them gently in a nearby box. It isn\u2019t much of a romantic celebration, really. But it is a triumph of sorts.<\/p>\n

Soft Robotics\u2019 RL7 and other grippers\u00a0can reliably perform some of the\u00a0physical tasks\u00a0we do countless times a day but have learned to take for granted. They can\u00a0pick up a pliable object and put it where it needs to go, all without having to identify the object with computer vision systems, or any kind of pre-programming.<\/p>\n

Besides the pink Peeps, the startup\u2019s lab is littered with a bizarre array of objects. There are bags of peanuts and various types of produce on one side, a knockoff Furby and plastic Frozen toys across the room. The lab has the makings of a terrible dollar\u00a0store, each object chosen for its inconsistency of shape, Soft Robotics CEO Carl Vause acknowledges.\u00a0But the inventory represents a\u00a0good cross-section of real-world products, he explained.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2013, Soft Robotics\u2019\u00a0grippers are already being used by manufacturers and retailers\u00a0to pick and pack everything from chocolates to injection-molded parts to uncooked pizza dough. The grippers don\u2019t look like a human hand. Instead, they are comprised of a cartoonish\u00a0quartet of rubbery, bright blue fingers that snap onto their target like an octopus clutching its prey.<\/p>\n

The name of the company is a nod to both the\u00a0soft\u00a0material used to make its grippers and\u00a0a\u00a0sub-category<\/a> in the larger field of robotics.\u00a0Vause\u00a0traces his inspiration for the company back to a 2011 paper co-authored by George Whitesides<\/a>, now a board member at Soft Robotics.<\/p>\n

In it, the Harvard professor details a four-legged, X-shaped quadrupedal robot that looked destined to latch onto the face of an unsuspecting passenger in an Alien sequel. \u201cWe are interested in a unique class of robots,\u201d the paper explains. \u201cThat is, soft robots fabricated in materials [\u2026] that do not use a rigid skeleton to provide mechanical strength. The objective of this work is to demonstrate a soft robot that requires only simple design and control to generate mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n