This robotic tentacle gripper is gentle, practical, and terrifying

Hands, man, they’re a tough gig to beat. Four fingers? An opposable thumb? A design classic. But that’s never stopped scientists from trying to surpass what nature perfected. And their latest attempt to out-fing humanity’s fingers is pleasingly terrifying.

The engineers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) that designed this jellyfish-inspired gripper don’t seem to have blessed it with a name. So, in the interest of sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, I’m going to call it... Mr. Jelly Hands, without making any real effort to justify that choice.

Mr. Jelly Hands is an attempt to solve the ever-vexing gripper problem in robotics: that is, the challenge of designing something that g...

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