Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and UC Berkeley want to give quadrupeds more capabilities similar to their biological counterparts. Just like real dogs can use their front legs for things other than walking and running, like digging and other manipulation tasks, the researchers think quadrupeds could someday do the same.

Currently, we see quadrupeds use their legs as just legs to navigate their surroundings. Some of them, like Boston Dynamics’ Spot, get around these limitations by adding a robotic arm to the quadruped’s back. This arm allows Spot to manipulate things, like opening doors and pressing buttons, while maintaining the flexibility that four legs give locomotion.

However, the researchers at CMU and UC Berkeley taught a Unitree Go1 quadruped, equipped with an Intel RealSense camera for perception, how to use its front legs to climb walls, press buttons, kick a soccer ball and perform other object interactions in the real world, on top of teaching it how to walk.

The team started this challenging task by decoupling the skill learning into two broad categories: locomotion, which involves movements like walking or climbing a wall, and manipulation, which involves using one leg to interact with objects while balancing on three legs. Decoupling these tasks help the quadruped to simultaneously move to stay balanced and manipulate objects with one leg.

By training in simulation, the team taught the quadruped these skills and transferred them to the real world with their proposed sim2real variant. This variant builds upon recent locomotion success.

All of these skills are combined into a robust long-term plan by teaching the quadruped a behavior tree that encodes a high-level task hierarchy from one clean expert demonstration. This allows the quadruped to move through the behavior tree and return to its last successful movement when it runs into problems with certain branches of the behavior tree.

For example, if a quadruped is tasked with pressing a button on a wall but fails to climb up the wall, it returns to the last task it did successfully, like approaching the wall, and starts there again.

The research team was made up of Xuxin Cheng, a Master’s student in robotics at CMU, Ashish Kumar, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and Deepak Pathak, an assistant professor at CMU in Computer Science. You can read their technical paper “Legs as Manipulator: Pushing Quadrupedal Agility Beyond Locomotion” (PDF) to learn more. They said a limitation of their work is that they decoupled high-level decision making and low-level command tracking, but that a full end-to-end solution is “an exciting future direction.”

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All of the new tooling solutions are compatible with cobots that have an ISO 9409-1-50-4-M6 end-of-arm mounting pattern. Blank robots and tool plates are offered for those who wish to use their own mounting patterns.

Destaco highlighted its Microtool End Effectors, which it said enable cobots to perform palletizing functions. Users that know the length, width and weight of the packages to be lifted and transferred can select the palletizing kit type and pre-determined vacuum cup size necessary for the application, eliminating tool design work with off-the-shelf kits.

Destaco’s other cobot tooling solutions include:

CB-200 Quick-Move Base: Allows the cobot to be moved from one workstation to another without the need to reprogram the robot.

ARV-C Vacuum Gripper: Can pick up and move product via one airline with an auto-release vacuum generator; available in nine sizes and shapes.

MG Magnet Gripper: Allows the picking of ferrous material or components with one pneumatically actuated airline; available in two sizes.

MultiMount Tool Array: Mounts up to five different tools to the cobot wrist via various tool mounting plates and multiple extension lengths.

MultiMount Machine Tending: Can accommodate two grippers or two tools for use in work-piece exchange applications within CNC machining centers; features Blank, ISO-9409-50 and DirectConnect mounting plates.

MultiMount Tool Extension: Extends the reach of the cobot arm; a variety of tool plates and multiple extension lengths are available.

MicroTool Palletizing: Off-the-shelf kits to handle boxes from 160 to 750mm widths and 260 to 900mm lengths weighing less than 10 kg.

TC1 Manual Tool Changer: Allows the user to change cobot tools quickly and repeatedly and offers electric and air pass-through capabilities.

Tool Storage Tree: Securely stores and organizes up to six cobot tools safely and securely; fully adjustable with three different tree heights.

“Small payload robots are commonly found in larger industrial manufacturing facilities, but the low-cost entry into robotic automation has recently resulted in significant growth in their use across small, light industrial and commercial shops,” said Gary Labadie, global product director, Destaco. “Small payload robots are now a focus and a solution for both large and small facilities coping with the economic climate.”

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A Universal Robots collaborative robot arm with a Robotiq gripper. | Source: Robotiq

ASTM International announced that its robotics, automation and autonomous systems committee is developing a standard, WK83863, based on the grasp strength of robot end-effectors. 

The proposed standard is for a test method that evaluates an end-effector’s grasp strength to better determine its capabilities like limits of payload size and resistance to pull and push forces during operation. 

The standard outlines two major types of grasps: pinch and wrap. With a pinch grasp, the standard will measure how well the end-effector performs precision grasping. An end effector’s performance with power grasping is measured with a wrap grasp. 

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“These grasp-type end-effector performance standards will be useful to producers of these technologies as methods to characterize their performance, ultimately helping both end-users and integrators to match capabilities to application needs,” Joe Falco, ASTM International member, said. “Additionally, researchers and developers will benefit from a common set of benchmarks for improving end-effector designs.”

This standard will help to outline better the capabilities of different kinds of end-effectors with diverse designs. By outlining a unified framework for these robotic grippers and performance metrics, end-users and developers can have a better understanding of the raw traits of the technology they’re working with.

You will learn more about ASTM’s standards work at the Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11 in Boston), the world’s leading event focused on commercial robotics development. The event is produced by The Robot Report. Adam Norton, chairman of ASTM International’s Committee F45 on Robotics, Automation, and Autonomous Systems, will present an overview of the committee’s recent and upcoming activities. Norton will also hold an interactive discussion during the session to gather industry feedback on recommendations for future standards developments to ensure alignment with the community’s needs, both from a developer and user perspective.

Aaron Prather, director of ASTM’s robotics & autonomous systems programs, was recently a guest on The Robot Report Podcast. He discussed the current state of robotic standards at ASTM, specifically with Committee F45, and talked about some of the pitfalls that young robotics companies can trip over when attempting to sell their solutions to a large fortune 500 company like FedEx, for which he served as senior technical advisor for many years. You can listen to that podcast episode below. The interview with Prather starts at the 19:20 mark.

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Soft Robotics grippers can move items that might be damaged by classic mechanical grippers. | Credit: Soft Robotics

Robots are finally getting a grip. 

Developers have been striving to close the gap on robotic gripping for the past several years, pursuing applications for multibillion-dollar industries. Securely gripping and transferring fast-moving items on conveyor belts holds vast promise for businesses. 

Soft Robotics, a Bedford, Mass. startup, is harnessing NVIDIA Isaac Sim to help close the sim-to-real gap for a handful of robotic gripping applications. One area is perfecting gripping for pick and placement of foods for packaging. 

Food packaging and processing companies are using the startup’s mGripAI system which combines soft grasping with 3D Vision and AI to grasp delicate foods such as proteins, produce, and bakery items without damage.

“We’re selling the hands, the eyes and the brains of the picking solution,” said David Weatherwax, senior director of software engineering at Soft Robotics. 

Unlike other industries that have adopted robotics, the $8 trillion food market has been slow to develop robots to handle variable items in unstructured environments, says Soft Robotics. 

The company, founded in 2013, recently landed $26 million in Series C funding from Tyson Ventures, Marel and Johnsonville Ventures.

Companies such as Tyson Foods and Johnsonville are betting on the adoption of robotic automation to help improve safety and increase production in their facilities. Both companies rely on Soft Robotics technologies. 

Soft Robotics is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program, which provides companies with GPU support and AI platform guidance. 

Getting a grip with synthetic data

Soft Robotics develops unique models for every one of its gripping applications, each requiring specific data sets. And picking from piles of wet, slippery chicken and other foods can be a tricky challenge. 

Utilizing Omniverse and Isaac Sim, the company can create 3D renderings of chicken parts with different backgrounds, like on conveyor belts or in bins and with different lighting scenarios. 

The company taps into Isaac Replicator to develop synthetic data, generating hundreds of thousands of images per model and distributing that among an array of instances in the cloud. Isaac Replicator is a set of tools, APIs, and workflows for generating synthetic data using Isaac Sim.

It also runs pose estimation models to help its gripping system see the angle of the item to pick. 

NVIDIA A100 GPUs on site enable Soft Robotics to run split-second inference with the unique models for each application in these food-processing facilities. Meanwhile, simulation and training in Isaac Sim offer access to NVIDIA A100s for scaling up workloads.

“Our current setup is fully synthetic, which allows us to rapidly deploy new applications. We’re all in on Omniverse and Isaac Sim, and that’s been working great for us,” said Weatherwax. 

Solving issues with occlusion, lighting 

A big challenge at Soft Robotics is solving issues with occlusion for an understanding of how different pieces of chicken stack up and overlap one another when dumped into a pile. “How those form can be pretty complex,” Weatherwax said.

Glares on wet chicken can potentially throw off detection models. “A key thing for us is the lighting, so the NVIDIA RTX-driven ray tracing is really important,” he said. 

The glares on wet chicken is a classic lighting and vision problem that requires a new approach for training machine learning vision models. | Credit: Soft Robotics

But where it really gets interesting is modeling it all in 3D and figuring out in a split second which item is the least obstructed in a pile and most accessible for a robot gripper to pick and place. 

Building synthetic data sets with physics-based accuracy, Omniverse enables Soft Robotics to create such environments. “One of the big challenges we have is how all these amorphous objects form into a pile,” Weatherwax said. 

Boosting production line pick accuracy

Production lines in food processing plants can move fast. But robots deployed with application-specific models promise to handle as many as 100 picks per minute. 

Still a work in progress, success in such tasks hinges on accurate representations of piles of items, supported by training data sets that consider every possible way items can fall into a pile. 

The objective is to provide the robot with the best available pick from a complex and dynamic environment. If food items fall off the conveyor belt or otherwise become damaged then it is considered waste, which directly impacts yield.

Driving production gains 

Meat-packing companies rely on lines of people for processing chicken, but like so many other industries they have faced employee shortages. Some that are building new plants for food processing can’t even attract enough workers at launch, said Weatherwax. 

“They are having a lot of staffing challenges, so there’s a push to automate,” he said.

The Omniverse-driven work for food processing companies has delivered a more than 10X increase in its simulation capacity, accelerating deployment times for AI picking systems from months to days. 

And that’s enabling Soft Robotics customers to get a grip on more than just deploying automated chicken-picking lines — it’s ensuring that they are covered for an employment challenge that has hit many industries, especially those with increased injury and health risks. 

“Handling raw chicken is a job better suited for a robot,” he said.

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Boston Dynamics never disappoints when it releases a video showing new capabilities for its robots. And it just released a video, “Atlas Gets a Grip,” in which the humanoid performs a slew of new moves at a simulated construction site.

A “construction worker” atop a scaffold conveniently forgot some tools down on the ground. Instead of hopping down to get the tools himself, Atlas brings the tools to him. And this is where the magic happens.

Atlas, using a claw gripper, picks up and manipulates a wooden plank to create a bridge for itself onto the scaffold. It then picks up a toolbag, runs onto the scaffold, spins around and throws the toolbag up to the construction worker. Atlas then pushes a wooden box off the scaffold and flips and twists its way to the ground.

You can watch the video atop this page. Boston Dynamics said the new capabilities represent a natural progression of the humanoid robot’s skillset, particularly in areas of perception, manipulation and autonomy. Atlas’ ability to pick up and move objects of different sizes, materials, and weights while staying balanced is enabled by improved locomotion and sensing capabilities.

For this video, Boston Dynamics installed utility “claw” grippers with one fixed finger and one moving finger. Boston Dynamics said this gripper debuted during its Super Bowl commercial when Atlas lifted a keg over its head. These simple grippers are designed for heavy lifting tasks.

According to Boston Dynamics, some of the other new capabilities include:

• Improved control systems in order to jump 180-degree jump while holding the wooden plank.
• Performing a spinning jump while throwing the tool bag. To accomplish this task, Boston Dynamics extended the model predictive controller (MPC) to consider the coupled motion of both the robot and object together.
• Pushing the wooden box from the platform, which meant Atlas needed to generate enough power to cause the box to fall without sending itself off of the platform.
• Atlas’ concluding move, an inverted 540-degree, multi-axis flip, adds asymmetry to the robot’s movement making it a much more difficult skill than previously performed parkour.

“We’re layering on new capabilities,” said Ben Stephens, Atlas controls lead, Boston Dynamics. “Parkour and dancing were interesting examples of pretty extreme locomotion, and now we’re trying to build upon that research to also do meaningful manipulation. It’s important to us that the robot can perform these tasks with a certain amount of human speed. People are very good at these tasks, so that has required some pretty big upgrades to the control software.”

Boston Dynamics released a must-watch video (below) that takes you behind the scenes of how this new routine was developed.

In a blog, Boston Dynamics explained some of the more complex sequences in the new routine. Stephens said Atlas manipulating the large wooden plank was especially challenging. Instead of turning around cautiously, Atlas performed a 180-degree jump while holding the plank. Stephens said this meant Atlas’ control system needed to account for the plank’s momentum to avoid toppling over.

He also said pushing the wooden box from the platform is a deceptively complex task. Atlas needed to generate enough force to cause the box to fall, leaning its weight into the shove without sending its own body off the platform.

Stephens also said the flip at the end of the routine is much more difficult than previous acrobatics. The twist adds asymmetry that doesn’t exist in a regular backflip. Not only is the math more complicated, but in trial runs, Atlas kept getting tangled in its own limbs as it tucked its arms and legs.

“We’re using all of the strength available in almost every single joint on the robot,” Deits says. “That trick is right at the limit of what the robot can do.”

Stephens said humanoids that can routinely tackle dirty and dangerous jobs in the real world are a “long way off.” So it appears Atlas will remain a research platform for the foreseeable future.

“Manipulation is a broad category, and we still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “But this gives a sneak peek at where the field is going. This is the future of robotics.”

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Soft Robotics’ mGrip soft gripper can handle even delicate foods, like cupcakes, without smashing them. | Source: Soft Robotics

Soft Robotics brought in $26 million in the first closing of its Series C funding round. This brings the robotic picking company’s total funding to $86 million, according to Crunchbase. 

Soft Robotics plans to use the latest round of funding to expand commercial deployments of mGripAI, its robotic picking product. mGripAI is an IP69K-rated automation package that uses 3D vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to allow industrial arms to perform automated bulk picking in food processes. 

mGripAI, originally brought to market in 2021, can perform over 90 picks per minute. The system includes perception modules that capture high-resolution, 3D images. These images are sent to an intelligence module, which translates them into action for the robotic arm and gripper. The mGrip soft gripper works in unison with the intelligence module to pick the product. 

The mGripAI system is able to track objects in real time for maximum pick accuracy. The system is also capable of grasp optimization, intelligent robot motion control and embedded object understanding. 

“We’re delighted that some of the world’s leaders in the food production and automation markets have decided to join existing investors in supporting SRI’s continuing growth journey,” Jeff Beck, CEO of Soft Robotics, said. “SRI’s technologies are increasingly crucial to enabling and scaling efficient and safe production of several food categories. This round of growth capital strengthens SRI’s ability to rapidly develop, deploy and support those technologies.”

Tyson Ventures, the venture capital arm of Tyson Foods and an existing Soft Robotics customer, led the funding round. Marel and Johnsonville, another Soft Robotics customer, also joined the funding round as new investors. The round also included participation from the company’s existing investors. 

“At Tyson, we are continually exploring new areas in automation that can enhance safety and increase the productivity of our team members,” Rahul Ray, Senior Director of Tyson Ventures, said. “Soft Robotics’ revolutionary robotic technology, computer vision and AI platform have the potential to transform the food industry and will play a key role in any company’s automation journey.”

While the company has primarily focused on automated bulk food processes, in May, Soft Robotics announced that it will be expanding the commercial focus of its mGripAI, a soft gripping solution for automating bulk food picking processes. The company plans to make the product available for order fulfillment, sortation, decanting and kitting. 

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Harvard’s tentacle-like gripper wrapping around a succulent. | Source: Harvard Microrobotics Lab/Harvard SEAS

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a tentacle-like gripper that can grasp irregularly shaped or soft objects without damaging them. 

The gripper is made up of many thin, soft tentacles that rely on inflation to wrap themselves around an object without any sensing, planning or feedback control. Individually, each tentacle is too weak to pick up many objects, but with many working together the gripper can gently lift heavy and oddly shaped objects.

Each tentacle is made up of a foot-long hollow, rubber rubes. The tubes are made with thicker plastic on one side, so that was the tube is pressurized it curls like a pigtail. As the tube curls, it wraps and entangles itself around an object. Each added tentacle increases the strength of this hold. The gripper releases the object by simply depressurizing the tentacles. 

When designing the gripper, the research team took inspiration from nature. The gripper’s tentacles act similarly to how a jellyfish stuns its prey. 

To test how effective the gripper was, the research team used simulation and experiments where the gripper was tasked with handling a range of objects, including different houseplants and toys. 

The team hopes that the gripper can be used to grasp fragile objects, like soft fruits and vegetables in agricultural production and distribution and delicate tissue in medical settings, as well as irregularly shaped objects, like glassware, in warehouses. The gripper could replace traditional grippers that rely on embedded sensors, complex feedback loops and advanced machine-learning algorithms to work. 

The team’s research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It was co-authored by Clark Teeple, Nicholas Charles, Yeonsu Jung, Daniel Baum and James C. Weaver, and supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation and the Henri Seydoux fund. 

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Piab’s 35 lb capacity piCOBOT L. | Source: Piab

Piab has continued to evolve its piCOBOT program by adding a larger version. Developed with the needs of customers in mind who work with small industrial robots and cobots, its high payload combined with a low building height enables maximum capacity usage.

With its lifting capacity of up to 35 lb, Piab’s new piCOBOT L is particularly attractive for e-commerce, logistics and warehouse applications as well as for assisting with lifting heavier items in production. It builds on the same technology platform as the original version, meaning it consists of a vacuum pump unit and an optional gripper unit.

The vacuum pump unit is scalable and can be equipped with a varying number of the newest powerful COAX cartridge. Offering a significantly higher vacuum performance, it enables fast movement when lifting heavier items for high productivity in packaging and palletizing, part assembly or machine tending.

Its high vacuum flow further facilitates the deployment of large Kenos foam grippers that can lift a broad variety of objects, from single large and heavy ones to a multitude of small ones simultaneously. The piCOBOT L is also an excellent platform for customized end effectors – either developed by Piab’s Custom Line specialists or by the customer or system integrator themselves. Thanks to the vacuum connection at the bottom of the pump no extra cabling is required when attaching a different gripper unit.

While the piCOBOT L allows manual gripper changes and dissembling the tool from the pump unit, the requirement to speed up tool changes when needed, called for an automated process to ensure continuous operations, provide flexibility for deployment of one solution for many different tasks at lowest possible cost. Hence, the most important addition is its optional automatic tool changer combined with a docking station for further end-effectors. The automatic tool changer is equipped with a lever to lock or unlock the adapter plate of the end-effector. The lever can be opened and closed automatically by the docking station to remove a gripping unit from the cobot and pick-up and connect a different one without human interference being necessary. Alternatively, the gripper switch at the tool changer can also take place manually.

The piCOBOT L was developed with easy access to parts that may require cleaning in mind. Accordingly, the ejector cartridges can be extracted in portions and the vacuum stages cleaned where needed. The integration of dust protection filters further maximizes machine uptimes. Thanks to its IP65 compliant robust pump body long operation times are also realized in harsh environments.

• Enables high-speed applications thanks to utilizing the newest powerful COAX vacuum cartridges
• Lifts more with less due to its high payload of 35 lb and low building height of just under 5 inches
• Safe for direct human-robot collaboration owing to its rounded edges
• High uptime even in harsh environments thanks to easy serviceability and IP65 compliant robust body

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Mohsen Saadat has always been inventive and technically gifted. As a young boy, the 5-year-old Iranian invented his own toys, building small cars out of wire, for example – without any tools. The now 75-year-old’s passion for technology has never left.

At 19, Saadat moved to Germany, studied engineering, and taught as a professor. In 1991, he founded GMG – Gesellschaft für modulare Greifersysteme in Soest, North Rhine-Westphalia. His goal was to combine higher design theory scientific methods with state-of-the-art manufacturing processes.

“Within a few years, we successfully developed lightweight and flexible gripper systems for robots and automation systems based on the human hand,” says Saadat proudly.

He convinced numerous industries of his technology. The grippers, which have up to six individually movable fingers and, in some cases, over 100 joints, are used to handle car wheels in the automotive industry, to hold up sacks when filling them with bulk material, or to package sausage and cheese in the food industry.

A flexible and torsional rigid tower as the long arm of the gripper

However, one of the inventions that make Saadat proudest is a multifunctional long arm gripper system. The gripper can automatically pack manufactured components – such as brake discs – with three fingers, place them in boxes and then place a layer of protective cardboard over them using a vacuum gripper.

“In this gripper system, a creatively designed, flexible, and torsional rigid tower serves as the long arm of the gripper,” explains Saadat.

“Depending on the task, gripping elements emerge from this tower that mechanically picks up components. After the work is complete, the gripping and suction elements retract to their starting position within the tower.”

Which bearings are suitable for finger joints?

One of the challenges in the development process was to find suitable bearings for the moving metal components of the gripper, such as the finger joints. All the gripper components had to be low-friction, abrasion-resistant, maintenance and lubrication-free, and easy to install. Therefore Saadat quickly ruled out traditional rolling bearings.

“Rolling bearings are suitable for sustained rotational motion. They require the manufacture of more accurate fit, involve complex assembly and disassembly, and result in metallic noise,” stated Saadat.

These disadvantages led Saadat to opt for an alternative: plain bearings made of high-performance plastics from igus – a motion plastics specialist from Cologne that tribologically optimizes plastics for industrial applications.

“We have been relying on plain bearings from igus since 1991. It was, therefore, clear from the outset that the polymer bearings would also be used in the multifunctional long arm gripper. There is virtually no alternative to these bearings for us in automation technology, where there are constant back and forth movements,” says Saadat.

Another advantage is that, compared to traditional metal bearings, the polymer bearings are light, corrosion-free, and maintenance-free. They allow dry operation without needing lubrication, thanks to integrated solid lubricants.

“That’s a critical specification. Because we couldn’t expect our customers to have to lubricate the gripper on a regular basis,” says Saadat.

Virtually no signs of wear after 200,000 cycles

The polymer bearings from igus are so robust that the bearings will outlast a gripper life of around 30 years.

“This is an advantage for our multifunctional gripper, as the maintenance effort is reduced and productivity increases,” continues Saadat.

A test in the igus in-house laboratory also demonstrates how wear-resistant the bearings are. The igus polymer bearings were tested against classic metal bearings in the laboratory. Both bearing types pivoted on a gas-nitrided St52 steel shaft – with a load of 30MPa and a speed of 0.01 meter per second.

“In the case of the metal bearings, the gliding layer was worn after 60,000 cycles,” says Stefan Loockmann-Rittich, head of the iglidur bearings business unit. “The iglide G plain bearings, on the other hand, showed almost no signs of wear even after 200,000 cycles. They are therefore ideally suited for reliable and maintenance-free use over many years.”

Specifications also apply to another bearing used in GMG’s multifunctional gripper. The gripper also uses drylin R linear bearings, which enable a controlled and safe linear movement of the gripper linkage. “The igus bearings convince us time and again, so we will continue to rely on the iglide polymers in the future,” sums up Saadat.

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MAXXgrip enables higher speed pick and place operations for warehouse robots. | Credit: The Gripper Company

The Gripper Company officially launched MAXXgrip, its first gripper solution designed specifically for warehouse and logistics applications.

The new MAXXgrip gripper uses a vacuum and four soft fingers that move to solve the problems robot grippers have with handling pieces in warehouse picking and sorting jobs where there are a lot of different kinds of items to handle. An articulating vacuum gripper is used for initial item acquisition, then the fingers are deployed to stabilize the gripped item during the transfer by the robot.

By making the payload stable while it’s in flight, it’s possible to go faster, which speeds up the overall pick-and-place cycle. The gripper unit is lightweight and weighs in at 3.75 to 5.6 lb (1.4 to 2.1 kg) depending on the configuration. It can carry payloads up to 13 lbs (5 kg).

“MAXXgrip is able to access a significantly wider range of SKUs with simplified training at previously unmatched throughput and still with high reliability and gentleness, compared to state-of-the-art gripping. The MAXXgrip has undergone extensive tests to ensure solid evidence of its capabilities and performance. We have surveyed the series of job settings related to logistics and warehouse material handling robotics and worked with a series of the most experienced system builders, suppliers and end-users to sharpen the KPIs of the design and the support structure around it,” says Preben Hjørnet, CTO of The Gripper Company.

The MAXXgrip gripper was designed to address the unique needs of e-commerce fulfillment workflows. Robotics is being deployed into warehouses and distribution centers to automate eaches picking and item singulation workflows. The robots are presented with bins of bulk SKUs and are expected to pick items quickly for customer orders.

Likewise, the robot might be presented with a bin of mixed SKUs and be expected to singulate or sort the items. In this case, vision is used to identify the individual items. MAXXgrip enables the robot to reach into deep bins to pick items.

The MAXXgrip is robot vendor independent and can be deployed on any industrial robot or collaborative robot (cobot). It comes with a compact, high-performance air control unit with a straightforward and easily adaptable interface. ISO bolt pattern allows the MAXXgrip to mount to all major robot arm brands right out of the box.

“We have stress-tested and been through a series of general consumer products and parcels found in e-commerce warehouses and logistics distribution centers. Test criteria have been specified together with leading warehouse automation suppliers. We are very excited to have gotten to the point where we are ready to release the MAXXgrip into an industry that really needs a better gripper offering to strengthen its ability to meet customer expectations and accelerate the global deployment of warehouse and logistics robotics handling systems,” says Hjørnet.

The company prepared a series of reference work cell programs to help speed deployments. This includes digital twin simulation gripper units and work cells implemented for a number of robot vendors.

“During the coming months, we will introduce a series of add-ons that will enable targeted applications to benefit from a collection of unit-level options, like soft fingertips, actuator variants and more. We will publish a series of instructional and use-case videos that will provide good inspiration and guidance on how the MAXXgrip platforms can be applied to various applications,” says CEO Kim Nielsen. 

The Gripper Company was founded in 2019 by industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Preben Hjørnet. He has more than a decade of experience in conceiving, designing, and producing soft grippers for industrial robots.

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A gripper from Soft Robotics. | Credit: Soft Robotics

ASTM International’s committee on robotics, automation, and autonomous systems (F45) has formed a new subcommittee on grasping and manipulation. This new subcommittee (F45.05) will develop standards that evaluate performance in several major areas of robotic manipulation.

The first three task groups of the committee will develop standards for the performance of grasping type end-effectors, mobile manipulators and robotic assembly systems, covering their use in both fixed and mobile base systems.

Aaron Prather, ASTM International’s new director of robotics and autonomous systems programs, says these standards will help speed up deployments and cut wasteful spending on selecting the wrong tool. Prather noted the subcommittee supports UN Sustainable Development Goal #9 on industries, innovation, and infrastructure.

“As robotics and automation continue to expand into new and diverse industries, performance standards that help end users better select their end-effectors and/or manipulators to the task they are working on will be key,” said Prather. “Seeing the number of experts from across the world joining this work shows just how much this group is needed.”

The subcommittee will be initially headed by two co-chairs, Joe Falco and Omar Aboul-Enein, both from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Experts from countries around the world, including Germany, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States are participating in the committee, with more welcome.

Out of six proposed standards currently planned for development, the subcommittee plans to register two by the end of 2022, on grasp strength and finger repeatability.

Monthly calls will be held for the task groups through 2023, and the subcommittee will be present to meet at ASTM International’s October standards development meetings from October 19-20, 2022. ASTM welcomes participation in the development of its standards.

Prather was named to this position in August 2022 after spending nearly 27 years at FedEx Express. He developed and deployed robotics and autonomous systems in numerous operations across the globe in his previous role with FedEx. He has participated in standards development at both A3 and UL. Prather is also passionate about working with workforce development programs and building up the 21st workforce in Manufacturing, Logistics, Robotics, and Automation.

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Robots picking items in Amazon’s warehouses need to be able to handle millions of different items of various shapes, sizes and weights. Right now, the company primarily uses suction grippers, which use air and a tight seal to lift items, but Amazon’s robotics team is developing a more flexible gripper to reliably pick up items suction grippers struggle to pick.

Amazon is teaching robots how to understand cluttered environments in three dimensions, locate specific items and pick them using a pinch grasp, or a thumb and finger hold. The company’s current vacuum-like grippers use elastic suction cups that form to the surface of an item. This creates a tight seal that allows the robot to pick objects.

Amazon said this method works great for flat items that only require one point of contact for picking, like rulers or cards. It’s less effective, Amazon said, for items that require more than one point of contact to pick up, for example, a book will fly open if you pick it from just the front or back cover.

Suction grippers also struggle to get a tight seal on bags filled with granular items, like marbles, according to Amazon. And even on items these grippers can pick up well, if the angle of attachment changes because of the momentum of the robot arm swinging it from one place to another, then the seal will break too early and the robot drops the item.

These cases are why Amazon is interested in the pinch-grasp method. Despite how natural it is for humans, it’s not a simple one to develop in a robot. To teach a robot to pick items out of piles of other items using this method, researchers first needed to teach it to be able to estimate the shape of items that could be partially obscured by other items.

As humans, we do this without even thinking about it, but robots have a much harder time understanding the whole shape of an item if they can’t see all of it. Amazon’s robots gauge what they’re picking by using multiple camera angles and machine learning models trained to recognize and estimate the shape of individual items. The robot uses this to decide how to best grasp the item on two surfaces.

Once the robot makes those observations, it uses a set of motion algorithms to combine the information it gathered about the scene and the item with the known dynamics of the robot to calculate how to move the item from one place to another.

The robot also continues to use its multiple-angle view of the situation throughout the pick. This is another deviation from typical picking methods, where a robot won’t usually continue to look at the scene as it carries out a pick.

So far, Amazon’s team has seen encouraging success with its pinch-grasping robots. A prototype robot achieved a 10-fold reduction in damage on certain items, like books, without slowing down operations, Amazon said.

Despite this, Amazon still sees room for improvement. The team is currently using an off-the-shelf gripper that can only pick items that weigh less than 2 lbs. This makes the gripper capable of handling only half of the items that Amazon has available for purchase. Going forward, the team plans to design its own gripper for the job. 

In the future, Amazon hopes that it can implement its pinch-grasping robot alongside its current suction ones so that it can decide which robot would be best suited to picking each individual item. The company is using a similar strategy with its Proteus autonomous mobile robot (AMR). 

Amazon unveiled Proteus in June 2022, expanding its already extensive robotics ecosystem. The company had already been using automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in its warehouses for a decade, but these AGVs only work in caged-off spaces. 

While both of the robots perform similar tasks, sliding under Amazon’s GoCarts to pick them up and move them across the warehouse, Proteus gives the company greater flexibility because of its ability to work freely and safely around people. The company plans to continue using both robots going forward. 

Amazon recently announced that it agreed to acquire Cloostermans, a Belgium-based company that specializes in mechatronics. Cloostermans has been selling products to Amazon since at least 2019, including technology Amazon uses in its operation to move and stack heavy pallets and totes and robots to package products for customer orders.

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The 22 objects that the University of Washington team tested its grippers on. | Source: University of Washington

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tool that can design 3D-printable, passive grippers so that robots can more easily switch between different tasks. 

Many robots are tied to a single job and are unable to switch gears if needed to perform a task outside of their usual one. University of Washington researchers are hoping to address this issue by creating a system that can design passive grippers, so the robot can switch out grippers and perform a task with new objects. 

To design the grippers, the team provides the computer with a 3D model of the object it’s going to pick and its orientation in space. The team’s algorithms then generate possible grasp configurations and ranks them based on stability and other metrics.

Next, the computer picks the best option and co-optimizes it to see if an insert trajectory is possible. If it can’t find one, it moves on to the next option until it finds one that will. When it does, the computer outputs instructions for a 3D printer to create a gripper, and for the robot arm to find the trajectory for picking up the object. 

The researchers tested its system on 22 different objects and successfully picked 20 of them. For each shape, the researchers did 10 pickup tests. For 16 of the shapes, all 10 tests were successful. 

The robot was unable to pick two of the objects because of issues in the 3D model of the objects that were given to the computer. The first object, a bowl, was modeled with thinner sides than they really were, and the second object, a cup with an egg-shaped handle, was incorrectly oriented. 

The system excelled at picking objects that vary in width or have protruding edges, and struggled with uniformly smooth surfaces, like a water bottle. 

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and a grant form the Murdock Charitable Trust. Authors on the paper include Milin Kodnongbua, Ian Good, Yu Lou, Jeffrey Lipton and Adriana Schulz.

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I am a robotics booster. I believe that smart robots will have a positive impact, helping us deal with some of the challenges that humanity will continue to face over the next several decades – from climate change to food production, from shelter to entertainment.

Basically, I’m optimistic about the role robots can have in our lives.

However, every now and then I run into specific areas that give me pause, and the emerging field (?) of necrobotics is one of them. In case you’re wondering, necrobotics means turning dead tissue into (parts of) a robot.

Anyone who has read fantasy books will likely recognize the term necromancer; for everyone else, it means a person who uses witchcraft to reanimate dead people or to tell the future by communicating with them. Now this concept is crossing over into the real world, except using science and engineering as a modern form of
witchcraft.

First, some context. Researchers at Rice University have found a way to turn dead spiders into robotic grippers. Assistant Professor Daniel Preston and his research group tapped into the hydraulic infrastructure of dead spiders using a needle to control the extension and contraction of the dead spider’s legs.

To be fair, this is not completely new. Humans have been using animals for their own purposes for thousands of years, whether it’s horses for transport, oxen to plow fields, chicken for eggs or cattle for … well, you know. Some of those animals are controlled through mechanical devices (bridles, yokes). Granted, they’re usually alive.

So what makes this different? Is it just that we consider it yucky? What makes it more disturbing: that it’s a spider (many people have various degrees of arachnophobia) or that it’s dead (death makes many people uncomfortable)?

For me, it’s neither of those. The part I find concerning is where this concept of attaching an external actuator to muscle tissue might lead. The researchers at Rice hint at some problems that result from the fact that they’re working with dead tissue: its performance decreases (“shows wear and tear”) after 1,000 cycles due to dehydration of the joints.

The fact that the spiders are dead in the current experiment may actually be a form of kindness. From a pure research/engineering perspective, the solution to the dehydration problem might be to keep the spider alive while taking over the hydraulic portion of its body. Then, why stop at spiders? Would installing a nervous system shunt in mammals be the next step?

This dystopian practice of turning living/half dead beings into zombie meat puppets might be called zombiotics.

If this sounds a bit too sci-fi, consider that companies like Neuralink are working on brain computing (they are waiting to receive approval from the Federal Drug Administration to implant its technology in humans), and Synchron has already implanted its first device into the brain of a human patient. Cochlear implants have helped countless people with severe hearing loss, bypassing damaged portions of the ear to deliver signals to the auditory nerve.

Back to robotics, this is where ethics and technology must meet. Just because it can be done, it doesn’t mean we should. We should not demonize the researchers who did this work, but use it as an opportunity to think about where we go from here.

Robotics can do a lot of good, but like any technology it can also be used to cause harm. It’s up to all of us to steer it in the right direction.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the “Welcome to the Roboverse” newsletter from Florian Pestoni. It was reprinted with permission. Subscribe to that newsletter here. The views expressed in this article are Pestoni’s own.

About the Author

Florian Pestoni is co-founder and CEO of InOrbit, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that develops products to help companies operating growing robot fleets to improve efficiency, perform critical monitoring and control tasks remotely. Pestoni is also founder of the Robot Operations Group, a community of dedicated robotics practitioners working on creating best practices for robot operations at scale.

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Well, here’s something you don’t see everyday. Engineers at Rice University are turning dead spiders into mechanical grippers. The dead wolf spiders are being tested to show they can reliably lift more than 130% of their own body weight. The researchers said this is the first step toward a novel area of research they call “necrobotics.”

According to the researchers, unlike people and other mammals that move their limbs by synchronizing opposing muscles, spiders use hydraulics. A chamber near their heads contracts to send blood to limbs, forcing them to extend. When the pressure is relieved, the legs contract. Internal valves in the spiders’ hydraulic chamber, or prosoma, allow them to control each leg individually.

Watch the video at the top of this page to see a demo of the technology.

“The dead spider isn’t controlling these valves,” said Daniel Preston, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. “They’re all open. That worked out in our favor in this study, because it allowed us to control all the legs at the same time.”

To control the legs of a dead spider, the researchers tap into the prosoma chamber with a needle, attaching it with a dab of superglue. The other end of the needle is connected to one of the lab’s test rigs or a handheld syringe, which delivers a minute amount of air to activate the legs almost instantly.

An illustration shows the process by which Rice University mechanical engineers turn deceased spiders into necrobotic grippers, able to grasp items when triggered by hydraulic pressure. | Credit: Preston Innovation Laboratory

The lab ran one dead spider through 1,000 open-close cycles to see how well its limbs held up, and found it to be fairly robust.

“It starts to experience some wear and tear as we get close to 1,000 cycles,” Preston said. “We think that’s related to issues with dehydration of the joints. We think we can overcome that by applying polymeric coatings.”

This lab at Rice University specializes in soft robotic systems that often use non-traditional materials, like dead wolf spiders, as opposed to hard plastics, metals and electronics.

“This area of soft robotics is a lot of fun because we get to use previously untapped types of actuation and materials,” said Preston. “The spider falls into this line of inquiry. It’s something that hasn’t been used before but has a lot of potential.”

You can read the lab’s peer-reviewed research here to learn more information about necrobotics.

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