Robots Are Learning to Handle With Care

In August, the Bethlehem, Pa., candy maker will begin installing at its factory 16 robots with squishy blue "fingers" that can pick up and hold the pillowy Peeps without bruising them. The company hopes that its new robots' grippers, made by Soft Robotics Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., and part of a soft-robotics movement, will help it speed up production without damaging the treats. "We needed something like the human hand," says Brent Edsoren, senior project engineer at Just Born. Robots with pliant, dexterous--and fast--appendages are gaining popularity as companies in retail, food handling and agriculture move toward more automation. Fragile, malleable products that vary in shape and size, such as fruits and vegetables, suffer at the hands of conventional robots, in part because machines lack the highly tuned sensory feedback that humans have at their fingertips.