It is a recreation a variety of us performed as youngsters — and possibly even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it will lengthen earlier than bending. However to engineers on the College of California San Diego, this recreation was an inspiration, suggesting that measuring tape might turn out to be a fantastic materials for a robotic gripper.
The grippers could be a very good match for agriculture purposes, as their extremities are gentle sufficient to seize fragile vegetables and fruit, researchers wrote. The units are additionally low-cost and protected round people.
The staff revealed their course of and design within the journal Science Advances on April 9, 2025. They name their robotic GRIP-tape, with GRIP serving as an acronym for Greedy and Rolling In-Aircraft.
Constructing the best robotic gripper remains to be a piece in progress. Current grippers that may broaden are cumbersome as a result of they want extra mechanisms to get gripping appendages to broaden. The gripper the UC San Diego staff developed solves this downside.
That is as a result of the tape is each sturdy and versatile; could be saved in a small container when retracted; and may attain far when prolonged. After a sequence of trial-and-error experiments, the engineers decided that the perfect configuration for a gripper is definitely two of the tapes certain along with adhesive.
“We wish to search for non-traditional, non-intuitive robotic mechanisms. The tape measure is such a beautiful construction due to its mixed softness and stiffness collectively,” mentioned Nick Gravish, the paper’s senior writer and a college member within the UC San Diego Division of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
The gripper has two “fingers,” fabricated from two spools-each fabricated from two rolls of measuring tape certain collectively. Every spool is rolled up, in a compact configuration, with solely a small half extending out in a triangle form to kind a finger. These triangle sections are managed by 4 motors every that management the finger’s movement. Every finger can transfer independently. The triangle sections can lengthen to achieve objects which are farther away. They’ll additionally retract to carry objects nearer to the robotic arm the gripper is mounted on.
The researchers had already labored with measuring tape as a part of a grant from the Nationwide Science Basis to analyze gentle supplies that would bend whereas holding their form. Measuring tape is springy — you’ll be able to bend it any approach you need and it goes again to its unique state. It is also fabricated from metal, which is each sturdy and sturdy, in addition to skinny sufficient that it will not harm objects on contact. In actual fact, it is as gentle because the silicone utilized in most gentle robots.
The gripper is exclusive as a result of it makes use of the entire size of the tape as a gripping floor. The tape may also transfer to rotate objects or act as a conveyor belt. The gripper can maintain a variety of objects with totally different shapes and stiffness, from a rubber ball or a single tomato to an entire tomato vine or a lemon. As a result of the tape itself can act as a conveyor belt, the gripper can then deposit the objects it grasps into containers.
As a result of the tape is versatile, it might probably additionally navigate the obstacles the gripper may encounter on the best way to selecting up an object.
Experiments confirmed that the gripper might simply carry massive fruits like recent lemons.
Subsequent variations of the gripper might enhance on the unique by including superior sensors and AI-driven knowledge evaluation in order that the gripper can function autonomously.
The work was partially funded by the Nationwide Science Basis.
