Here is a soft robot gripper inspired by Japanese Kirigami. It can securely pick up objects of various sizes, weights, shapes, and fragility. This is achieved by cutting a sheet of flexible plastic in the right spots.
Using Kirigami technique, grippers can be made to pick up a single grain of sand or a bottle of water. This video from Douglas Holmes, BU College of Engineering associate professor and PhD student Yi Yang shows how this works.
[HT]