Soft grip: Pneumatic elastomers as robotic arms
Friday, January 21, 2011 - 12:31
in Earth & Climate
(PhysOrg.com) -- It looks like a starfish made of soft plastic. When air is blown into it through a thin tube it comes to life and the starfish closes like a hand. It does this so gently that it can grasp a raw egg without breaking it. This starfish-like grabber is the prototype for a pneumatic soft robotic arm made of soft plastic that has been introduced in the journal Angewandte Chemie by George M. Whitesides and his team at Harvard University (Boston, USA).