Imagine for a moment that you have suction cups for fingertips--unless you're currently on hallucinogens, in which case you should not imagine that. Each sucker is a different size and flexibility, making one fingertip ideal for sticking onto a flat surface like cardboard, another more suited to a round thing like a ball, another better for something more irregular, like a flower pot. On its own, each digit may be limited in which things it can handle. But together, they can work as a team to manipulate a range of objects. This is the idea behind Ambi Robotics, a lab-grown startup that is today emerging from stealth mode with sorting robots and an operating system for running such manipulative machines.