Electric-Field Sensors Improve Robotic Gripping

Posted 18 Sep 2007 at 02:14 UTC by Rog-a-matic

A robot gripper at Intel's Seattle research lab senses an object, in this case various bottles and cans, and before touching it collects information and decides exactly how to deal with it. The gripper uses copper and aluminum electrodes along with an oscillating voltage to create an electric field. The current induced by the field varies depending on the material sensed, which is then read and used by a processor to determine what the object is. Video and article at Technology Review.