Ground coffee party balloon robot gripper

If you've got ground coffee and a few party balloons lying around, you have the ingredients for a universal robot gripper, according to researchers at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and iRobot. In a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers including Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science at Cornell, describe how they used granular material instead of multijointed fingers to create a robot gripper. The researchers put ground coffee into a latex balloon and attached it to a robot arm. When the coffee balloon is pressed around an object like a brush, above, it deforms and envelops the target. When the air is removed from the balloon, the ground coffee solidifies around the brush, forming a firm grip.