Jeremy Lin might be causing waves in the sport of basketball at the moment, but here is a robotic arm that might just see robots have a basketball league of their own one day. Why so? Watch the video above and you will know what I mean, where the robotic arm known as the “Positive Pressure Universal Gripper” is capable of performing neat tricks. For instance, it boasts a gripper that works differently from the majority of the other robotic grippers, sporting an elastic balloon that has been filled with a sandlike material within.
When placed over an object, the soft balloon will blow up to conform to its shape, where air is then sucked out, allowing the balloon to harden around the object. The moment air is pumped back rapidly, said object will launch into the air in a rather precise manner. As mentioned earlier, the video above shows the competency of this robot in shooting hoops. This gripper’s capabilities have been described to include “performance increases of up to 85% in reliability, 25% in error tolerance, and the added capability to shoot objects by fast ejection.”
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