While humankind has made great strides in creating Terminator-like robotic appendages, we’re still a ways from an artificial arm that moves and acts precisely like a flesh-and-blood appendage.
Yet, a team of MIT technologists recently created a robot gripper that might help pave the path for one.
The Origami Robot Gripper is a robotic arm featuring a 3D printed silicone grip that contorts around an object to carry. At the machine’s heart is a gripper-to mount connector surrounded with silicone skin.
Whenever the gripper closes in on an object, a vacuum collapses the silicone around it, effectively grasping the item without crushing it—and it’s capable of doing so for objects that are up to a hundred times its own weight.
Explanation of the 3D printed robot gripper [Source: SolidSmack]
Inspired by the “magic ball” origami design, which is folded from a rectangular shape into a spherical one, the Origami Robot Gripper (they really need a shorter name for it) is meant to be a versatile hand which can conform itself to a wide variety of objects—regardless of the complexity of the shape.
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By SolidSmack.com
This is a very small behemoth of an online community about 3D CAD, technology, design, robots, ninjas… Ok, maybe not ninjas so much, but those guys are COOL so there just might be something about some dang ninjas. Besides the occasional blast of intensely cool product design and technology, we look at what’s going on in the world of 3D, add a splash of business insight and web tech into the mix and there ya got your SolidSmack.
![A 3D printed robot gripper [Source: SolidSmack]](https://fabbaloo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/image-asset_img_5eb09a4299024.jpg)
![Explanation of the 3D printed robot gripper [Source: SolidSmack]](https://fabbaloo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/image-asset_img_5eb09a42ee8af.jpg)
A manufacturing-as-a-service company has developed a way to 3D print continuous carbon fiber in a production setting.