Robots can use coffee as a picker-upper

Gripper made of bag of loose grains helps machines get a grip

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LENDING A HAND A robotic gripper made of a stretchy bag of coffee grounds and a vacuum picks up a shock absorber with ease. John Amend

A small bag filled with coffee grounds is lending robots a fingerless hand. The new kind of gripper, described online the week of October 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is capable of grasping all sorts of different objects with ease.