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Robots will be able to gently touch delicate objects
Manipulator grabbed ant i>
Engineers from the University of Science and Technology of Iowa создали a new type of robot manipulators that allow them to carefully handle delicate and small objects. The small tube-like tentacles wrap around the desired object and hold it without squeezing.
Classic manipulator resembles pliers or two fingers, which a man takes items. To keep the object in the fingers, it is necessary to squeeze. To avoid crushing fragile and cases, engineers are inventing different sucker emulate gecko feet and use other innovations . But American engineers decided to adopt seizures have octopus and the like.
Microtubules are only 8 mm in length and about 0, 2 millimeters in diameter. Material tubes - полидиметилсилоксан, transparent polymer.
The principle of operation is simple tubes. They are sealed on one side, and when the unit pumps air into them, they are straightened, and when siphoning - fold into multiple rings.
A certain form of the end of the tube and varying wall thickness allows it to fold into a helix in a controlled manner. The complex shape of the tube was able to create thanks to a preliminary computer modeling. This is the first tentacular manipulators that can fold in such a way that managed to make such small. Details can be read in a scientific journal Nature .
These manipulators will find their application in the field of medical robots. Delicate clamps can be used during operations for fixing and moving structures such as blood vessels or soft tissues.
On a similar principle works normal spider legs. Cranking spider legs, as usual, muscles, and unbend the hydrostatic pressure of hemolymph - the special fluid that circulates throughout the body cavity of the arthropod.
Tentacles long attracted engineers. A similar solution with flexible pneumatic tubes have demonstrated scientists from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (USA).
Creation of engineers from Harvard i>
From unusual solutions can recall prosthesis concept a > in which the motor pulls and loosens the cables passed through the tentacle. They allow the prosthesis gradually curl, grabbing items from small to quite large. Straightens the prosthesis due to internal elasticity.
The prosthesis-tentacle i>
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