Robotic fingers with a gentle touch

EPFL scientists have developed a soft robotic gripper that can bend and pick up delicate objects like eggs and paper, taking robotics to a whole new level. The gripper uses electroadhesion: flexible electrode flaps that act like a thumb-index gripper.
When the voltage is turned on, the electrodes bend towards the object, imitating muscle function. The tip of the electrodes act like fingertips that gently conform to the shape of the object, gripping onto it with electrostatic forces in the same way that a balloon sticks to the wall. Each electrode can carry 80 times its own weight and no prior knowledge about the object's shape is necessary (News Item EPFL, 1 February 2016).
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