Coffee-grounds-filled robotic trunk: Jamming Grippers Combine to Form Robotic Elephant Trunk

http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/jamming-grippers-combine-to-form-robotic-elephant-trunk

A cheap way to get many degrees of freedom of movement with 3 motors - jamming (vacuuming air out of a section full of coffee grounds) a proximal segment makes a distal segment move laterally when the outer string is tensioned.


Not unlike this German invention where inflation, rather than deflation, controls the arm.



https://youtu.be/86G9DLJEagw
"the jamming-based gripper’s good performance with almost any object, including a raw egg or a coin – both of which are notoriously difficult for traditional robotic grippers – are what sets the device apart from other grippers."   https://newatlas.com/universal-robotic-gripper/16729/
-Tom.