A gentle lifting gripper that could transform healthcare, mobility assistance and even unload heavy cargo. Read on!
Moving patients or lifting awkward, fragile objects has always been risky. Caretakers often strain themselves while manually rolling patients, positioning sling sheets, and operating mechanical lifts, a process that can cause injury to both the caregiver and the patient.
The engineers at MIT, Massachusetts and Stanford University, California have created a robotic gripper that can wrap around and lift a wide range of heavy objects. This gripper provides a gentler method while lifting fragile items as well as heavy loads.
The main purpose of this gripper is to assist nursing and rehabilitation settings.The transfer process is done by lifting the patient with help of a caretaker who must first physically move a patient onto their side, then back onto a hammock sheet. The caretaker then straps the sheet around the patient and hooks it onto the mechanical lift, which then can gently lift the patient out of bed.
Although designed for healthcare, the design could be scaled to perform industrial tasks as well. They also built a smaller version that can be attached to a commercial robotic arm that can lift a variety of heavy and fragile objects, including a watermelon or a glass vase without any damage.
For their demonstration, the team built a setup that uses extending air-pressurized tubes. These tubes slide under and around a person, lock into place, and then retract via motorized spool to raise the person smoothly from the bed. While traditional vine-inspired robots are designed as an open-loop that can extend and bend which is not secure, this gripper could make itself into a sling that can wrap around an object, closing the loop and suspending the object gently and securely.
Since soft robots can be relatively safe and low-cost in comparison to humanoid robots, the engineers behind the work are excited about the future aspects of using these robots for physically assisting people with mobility challenges.
