A Robot With Coffee-Filled Balloons For Hands Is The Best Grabber Yet

It's so simple it's brilliant! Bravo for thinking outside the box on this one!

Upon hearing of this, millions of people will facepalm and sigh "why didnt I think of that?"

Its one of those things that because of its simplicity is so blaringly obvious after the fact. Well done, sirs.

Take THAT future Robot Overlords - try and pull the trigger on your human-death-ray with THAT stubby gripper!!!

On the plus side, they are welcome to change any diapers that neeed to be changed !!

Most careful, sure. Moste useful, maybe. Most dextrous, not even close! Dexterity implies the ability to make many precise actions quickly, and hold objects requiring difficult grips. This thing can do neither of those. Although it would be great as a "picker upper", using it to operate any kind of tool or hold objects that need to be held with an orientation (IE, a knife, for cutting) would be pretty much impossible. Still very cool, and definitely useful in the right scenarios!

I am one of millions of people facepalming and sighing "why didnt I think of that?" I mean, it takes some kind of crazy genius to reverse engineer a bag of coffee grounds in an attempt to develop a better robot hand gripper thingy.

This is like the invention of the mouse - I think it'll probably define how physical manipulation of objects is routinely done in robotics.

Wow, I was like no way at first but it blew my mind.

Bet it can't deal cards.

Brian Keith Conrad

Who was it that once said, "Genius is in simplicity."?

Although, it is a very ingenius concept, it lacks in efficiency in most human applications, such as grabbing something from the side such as a cereal box or in any other situations where you would have no wall to push the object which the ball is trying to seize against. You cannot also seize small objects that are surrounded with bigger objects (opening the box of cereal). I believe that although this could be VERY useful in industry environments, this has limited application in our society. I think that skywalker robot arms will be ready to replace real members within the next two decades with technology that mostly already exist.

OF course, the rubber reduces friction

Yeah, but can it make coffee? Didn't think so.

This device cannot be used by itself it's just to simple, but if it's combined with a hand shaped device it could form finger and palm pads that will mold to the object being picked up giving it a better hold.
by useing a pressure guage to test the air pressure in it before the vacuume is used you can check how much pressure is being aplied to an object.

Amazing.

Imagine an alien evolved on another planet having "hands" like these.

Just add an index peak and an opposable thumb into the shape of the balloon.

Whos this guy. .Mr. Balloon Hands. .

Amazing :)
Ivan Malagurski

No more metal knuckles breaking your jaw in the future?
...only baloon hans suffocating and sucking onto your face
(i'm not serious)

Comfortably numb ..."My hands feel just like two balloons".

... I guess the British "Tea Bag" prototype just could not cut the proverbial mustard.

I agree with Clifford, in that this is too simple for it to be useful in everyday life. but combine 3 or so of these on a claw of sorts and you'd really have something, I'm not sure how well it would be suited to creating pads for each finger, that seems like it would lose alot of it's griping ability, and would be overly complex to work out a vacuum system for each finger. Over all I really love this example of how great simple solutions can be, and find it promising that people are thinking so far outside the box like this. By challenging the preconceptions of the field they're helping far more than had they simply built a better conventional hand, I can already see a multitude of other applications that will use this new idea.

thank you DARPA, Cornell, and iRobot.

If you created finger shaped balloons stretching out from a palm (filled with coffee grounds of course). Add a wire tendon connected to the tip of the finger to bend to the desired shape, then quickly vacuumed out the air you could perhaps create a simple hand shape which should be able to maintain hold of the object in question.

You'd need two articulated appendages. One to act as shown in the video clip to grab onto an object, and another to act as a backstop in the event the object is not up against a fixed surface. That way the robot could provide it's own fixed surface to push against. We call that an opposable thumb.

My only concern is that such a robot assigned the task of making coffee might raise issues related to cannibalism.

This is very cool and a real paradigm buster. Those in this thread who don't believe it will enable complex manipulaltion of objects are only looking at the big-single-bag prototype.

Use finer granules, more flexible skins, more joints of articulation, more bags overall; link these together with a coordinating program (i.e. brain) and I believe you would have an astoundingly robust and effective system for manipulating objects.

My first thought was that it seems to need a flat surface to press against while the balloon absorbs the shape it is to grip, but then I realized that if you had a second non deformable appendage (lets call it a thumb) you would be able to grab just about anything at any angle.

WOW !!!
This is really good news!
I really admire this kind of information.
Thanks

http://www.notebookshopper.net/

Wow! Just as Igot1forya said this is extremely simple but so brilliant at the same time! Sometimes the most advanced technology is composed of common household items like balloons and coffee grounds...

It is kind of ridiculous that we can become so techonlogically advanced, and have such basic, yet sophisticated pieces of techonology.

It is kind of ridiculous that we can become so techonlogically advanced, and have such basic, yet sophisticated pieces of techonology.

It is kind of ridiculous that we can become so techonlogically advanced, and have such basic, yet sophisticated pieces of techonology.

It is kind of ridiculous that we can become so techonlogically advanced, and have such basic, yet sophisticated pieces of techonology.

This is such a great idea. It is an example of how sometimes simpler is better. The most complicated technology is not always best. What a creative and brilliant invention.

Wait, did the Japanese not already come up with the idea... was there not anime robots with balls for hands?

So, how much solar energy have you collected and used today?

Vac-Man! Archnemesis of Stretch Armstrong!

hmmm.. i think its a great idea to use these simple objects. it's a great way for them to grip things, because of its flexibility.

Brilliant! Not near perfect by any means, but certainly a great idea and foundation to build upon. And who wouldn't want to shake hands with a warm cup (hand?) of coffee??

thats what i call *puts on sunglasses* a pick me up. YEEEEEAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Granted it would be several generations away and the balloon would need to be more durable, I could see this technology being used for rescuing people in building collapses, mine rescues etc. Obviously It would need to be of a larger scale.

I just saw a video of Kirby, and he was crossing a chasm by grasping a rope, when this came to mind. Kirby has hands that are like the ball.

I'm in highcshool and i have a project in which I need a robot arm that will pick things up and put them in buckets. This looks like a great idea for it, vs a tin can cut in half for bucket/claw thing. The one problem being I would need a vacuam that runs under 12 volts and uses a battery. would that be powerful enough to pick up D batteries (the heaviest object).