Tootfinder

🍓 A Modular Soft Gripper with Embedded Force Sensing and an Iris-Type Cutting Mechanism for Harvesting Medium-Sized Crops
#robots #agriculture #farming

Soft Regrasping Tool Inspired by Jamming Gripper
Takuya Kiyokawa, Zhengtao Hu, Weiwei Wan, Kensuke Harada
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13815 https://arxiv.or…

Soft Regrasping Tool Inspired by Jamming Gripper
Regrasping on fixtures is a promising approach to reduce pose uncertainty in robotic assembly, but conventional rigid fixtures lack adaptability and require dedicated designs for each part. To overcome this limitation, we propose a soft jig inspired by the jamming transition phenomenon, which can be continuously deformed to accommodate diverse object geometries. By pressing a triangular-pyramid-shaped tool into the membrane and evacuating the enclosed air, a stable cavity is formed as a placeme…

Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper: A Universal Gripper with Synergistic Suction-Grasping Capabilities for Cross-Scale and Cross-State Manipulation
Jianshu Zhou, Jing Shu, Tianle Pan, Puchen Zhu, Jiajun An, Huayu Zhang, Junda Huang, Upinder Kaur, Xin Ma, Masayoshi Tomizuka
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04585

Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper: A Universal Gripper with Synergistic Suction-Grasping Capabilities for Cross-Scale and Cross-State Manipulation
Grasping objects across vastly different sizes and physical states-including both solids and liquids-with a single robotic gripper remains a fundamental challenge in soft robotics. We present the Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper, a soft end-effector that synergistically integrates distributed surface suction with internal granular jamming, enabling cross-scale and cross-state manipulation without requiring airtight sealing at the contact interface with target objects. The EG Gripper can handle …

🫧 Artificial muscles use ultrasound-activated microbubbles to move
#machines

Artificial muscles use ultrasound-activated microbubbles to move
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed artificial muscles that contain microbubbles and can be controlled with ultrasound. In the future, these muscles could be deployed in technical and medical settings as gripper arms, tissue patches, targeted drug delivery, or robots.

🐘 MELEGROS: Monolithic Elephant-inspired Gripper with Optical Sensors
#robotics #machines

MELEGROS: Monolithic Elephant-inspired Gripper with Optical Sensors
The elephant trunk exemplifies a natural gripper where structure, actuation, and sensing are seamlessly integrated. Inspired by the distal morphology of the African elephant trunk, we present MELEGROS, a Monolithic ELEphant-inspired GRipper with Optical Sensors, emphasizing sensing as an intrinsic, co-fabricated capability. Unlike multi-material or tendon-based approaches, MELEGROS directly integrates six optical waveguide sensors and five pneumatic chambers into a pneumatically actuated lattic…

Kinetostatics and Particle-Swarm Optimization of Vehicle-Mounted Underactuated Metamorphic Loading Manipulators
Nan Mao, Guanglu Jia, Junpeng Chen, Emmanouil Spyrakos-Papastavridis, Jian S. Dai
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09093

Kinetostatics and Particle-Swarm Optimization of Vehicle-Mounted Underactuated Metamorphic Loading Manipulators
Fixed degree-of-freedom (DoF) loading mechanisms often suffer from excessive actuators, complex control, and limited adaptability to dynamic tasks. This study proposes an innovative mechanism of underactuated metamorphic loading manipulators (UMLM), integrating a metamorphic arm with a passively adaptive gripper. The metamorphic arm exploits geometric constraints, enabling the topology reconfiguration and flexible motion trajectories without additional actuators. The adaptive gripper, driven en…

M3D-skin: Multi-material 3D-printed Tactile Sensor with Hierarchical Infill Structures for Pressure Sensing
Shunnosuke Yoshimura, Kento Kawaharazuka, Kei Okada
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12419

M3D-skin: Multi-material 3D-printed Tactile Sensor with Hierarchical Infill Structures for Pressure Sensing
Tactile sensors have a wide range of applications, from utilization in robotic grippers to human motion measurement. If tactile sensors could be fabricated and integrated more easily, their applicability would further expand. In this study, we propose a tactile sensor-M3D-skin-that can be easily fabricated with high versatility by leveraging the infill patterns of a multi-material fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer as the sensing principle. This method employs conductive and non-conduct…

Single-Rod Brachiation Robot: Mechatronic Control Design and Validation of Prejump Phases
Juraj Lieskovsk\'y, Hijiri Akahane, Aoto Osawa, Jaroslav Bu\v{s}ek, Ikuo Mizuuchi, Tom\'a\v{s} Vyhl\'idal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02946

Single-Rod Brachiation Robot: Mechatronic Control Design and Validation of Prejump Phases
A complete mechatronic design of a minimal configuration brachiation robot is presented. The robot consists of a single rigid rod with gripper mechanisms attached to both ends. The grippers are used to hang the robot on a horizontal bar on which it swings or rotates. The motion is imposed by repositioning the robot's center of mass, which is performed using a crank-slide mechanism. Based on a non-linear model, an optimal control strategy is proposed, for repositioning the center of mass in a ba…

SCANS: A Soft Gripper with Curvature and Spectroscopy Sensors for In-Hand Material Differentiation
Nathaniel Hanson, Austin Allison, Charles DiMarzio, Ta\c{s}k{\i}n Pad{\i}r, Kristen L. Dorsey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02164

SCANS: A Soft Gripper with Curvature and Spectroscopy Sensors for In-Hand Material Differentiation
We introduce the soft curvature and spectroscopy (SCANS) system: a versatile, electronics-free, fluidically actuated soft manipulator capable of assessing the spectral properties of objects either in hand or through pre-touch caging. This platform offers a wider spectral sensing capability than previous soft robotic counterparts. We perform a material analysis to explore optimal soft substrates for spectral sensing, and evaluate both pre-touch and in-hand performance. Experiments demonstrate ex…

MagiClaw: A Dual-Use, Vision-Based Soft Gripper for Bridging the Human Demonstration to Robotic Deployment Gap
Tianyu Wu, Xudong Han, Haoran Sun, Zishang Zhang, Bangchao Huang, Chaoyang Song, Fang Wan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19169

MagiClaw: A Dual-Use, Vision-Based Soft Gripper for Bridging the Human Demonstration to Robotic Deployment Gap
The transfer of manipulation skills from human demonstration to robotic execution is often hindered by a "domain gap" in sensing and morphology. This paper introduces MagiClaw, a versatile two-finger end-effector designed to bridge this gap. MagiClaw functions interchangeably as both a handheld tool for intuitive data collection and a robotic end-effector for policy deployment, ensuring hardware consistency and reliability. Each finger incorporates a Soft Polyhedral Network (SPN) with an embedd…