(June 15, 2015) Picking
things up and putting them down is a mainstay of any kind of manufacturing, but
fingers, human or robotic, are not always best for the task at hand.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are developing
a new kind of gripper, motivated by the ability of animals like the gecko to
grip and release surfaces, that is perfectly suited for the delicate work
involved in semiconductor manufacturing.
Like the gecko, the gripper has “tunable adhesion,” meaning
that, despite having no moving parts, its effective stickiness can be tuned
from strong to weak. Unlike the gecko and other artificial imitators that rely
on structures with complex shapes, the Penn team’s gripper uses a simpler,
two-material structure that is easier to mass produce.
At their current millimeter-scale size, the grippers can be
used for moving smooth, fragile components, like silicon wafers or glass
sheets. Scaled down, they could be used in arrays to grip to a range of rough
and smooth surfaces, making them useful for climbing robots and other
larger-scale applications.