We have already covered a bunch of soft robots that can grab and move objects of all sizes and shapes. Researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have come up with a robotic fingertip that can change its shape to grab a wide variety of items.
As the researchers explain, this shape morphing fingertip was made to address dexterity and stability in grasping tasks:
it utilizes origami as its skeleton providing degrees of freedom at desired positions and motor-driven four-bar-linkages as its transmission components to achieve a compact size of the fingertip.
[HT]