Information

You are on the new improved site. You can view the old site in view-only mode here until June 27, 2026

loading
Cover: Lifting without squeezing: a delicate yet strong soft gripper. Our 1 g soft gripper can hold over 1.6 kg,yet applies only a few mN of closing force,enabling handling of fragile and soft objects. The 1000x ratio of lifting force over closing force is a result of the combination of artificial muscles,to gently close the gripper's finger onto the object,and of electroadhesion-functionalized fingertips,to generate high shear forces. All these functions are enclosed into a monollitic stretchable silicone structure. By moving the fingers apart,one can grasp large objects,such as fruit and vegetables. EPFL,Soft Transducers Lab (LMTS);Vito Cacucciolo,Jun Shintake,Herbert Shea. The version of the gripper shown on the cover is still unpublished,but it is an evolution of the device published in the following work: Shintake J,Rosset S,Schubert B,et al. Versatile soft grippers with intrinsic electroadhesion based on multifunctional polymer actuators. Adv Mater 2016;28:231–238. Cacucciolo V,Shintake J,Shea H. Delicate yet strong: characterizing the electro-adhesion lifting force with a soft gripper. In: IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft),Seoul,Korea,2019.