Gallery: A Beanbag Robot Hand That Works Insanely Well
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The $4,000 Versaball embodies the latest in robotics theory, but is essentially a lime green balloon filled with industrial-grade granules.
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The green blob presses itself against an object and deforms around it and a pump sucks the air out of the balloon, locking down on the object.
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Within a tenth of a second, Versaball can seize anything from tiny Lego bricks to shards of broken glass and can easily handle objects that weigh up to 20 pounds.
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For many objects, the ball envelops a portion of the object, creating a stronger mechanical grasp.
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Early prototypes were crude—test grippers were filled with everything from coffee grounds to hummus—but effective.
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"It's a smart place to start with biological solutions—millions of years of evolution went into the human hand, and it's the best gripper we know," says Versaball inventor John Amend. "It's hard, but occasionally we do stumble on with ideas that are competitive with nature, like the wheel."
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There are 300,000 small and medium-sized manufacturers in the US that could use automated robots and Versaball's flexibility make the bulbous 'bot a good bet.
