It's a game a lot of us played as children -- and maybe even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it would extend before bending. But to engineer, this game was an inspiration, ...

Steel measuring tape is an interesting material, in that it's rigid enough to hold its shape when extended, but flexible enough that it gives way under pressure. Scientists have taken advantage of ...

[Tazer] built a small desktop-sized robotic arm, and it was more or less functional. However, he wanted to improve its ability to pick things up, and attaching a pneumatic gripper seemed like the ...

Tools that offer early and accurate insight into plant health—and allow individual plant interventions—are key to increasing crop yields as environmental pressures increasingly impact horticulture and ...

When assessing the ripeness of fruit, sight and smell can tell you a lot, but the best indicator is often how the fruit feels. Cornell researchers used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to create a soft ...

A new one, inspired by plant seed pods, takes the form of a robotic gripper which is strong yet easily activated. Putting it simply, bistable devices are tensioned gadgets that are capable of ...

The proposed bistable gripper can maintain its grasp even without continuous energy input, while also being able to modulate its activation force, representing a new paradigm in robotic gripper design ...

A new robotic gripper inspired by seed pods can switch between gentle and powerful grips, holding objects without continuous energy and boosting robot adaptability. (Nanowerk News) Robotic grippers ...