Despite the fact that I still don’t really see many robots making their way into everyday life, I am always fascinated by the robotic demonstrations students, scientists, and others are able to put together. Not only are they fun to watch, but it reminds us that there is always another breakthrough just around the corner. With that in mind, Steve Norris of Norris Labs presents us with a lower-cost implementation of Cornell’s jamming-skin-enabled balloon gripper.
While traditional grippers have a very hard time picking up tiny objects, this balloon gripper can handle the task with ease. The demonstration includes a pretty wide variety of smaller objects, including some downright tiny stuff like screws and aspirin tablets. Not bad at all considering it is powered by a vacuum, am I right? Again, it doesn’t have much practical use yet, but I am sure we can work that in somewhere. If you watch the video and decide you want your very own handy dandy gripper robot guy (or woman), then here is the list of parts:
Constructed from:
- A standard party balloon
- Stop and Shop Ground Coffee
- Reynolds Handi-Vac
- CrustCrawler SG6-UT Robotic Arm
- Yost Engineering ServoCenter USB-Mini Servo Controller
If I had to guess, I would say that the list is organized from easiest to hardest to obtain. Reading it over, I am sure I could get everything I need up until the CrustCrawler SG6-UT. I don’t know what that would cost, and I am pretty sure I don’t want to. That doesn’t make the robot any less cool, though.
Robots do seem to be making their way into a variety of athletic activities, too. Here on Walyou we have featured a number of them, including this Ping Pong Paddle wielding robot and a robot that can play badminton. You better start polishing up your game now before you become obsolete.
Via: Make
