A team of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has created a soft robotic gripper capable of lifting 100 kg.

To create the new soft robotic gripper, the team employed a weaving technique wherein threads are tightly intertwined with various materials like PET plastic or rubber, to create a fabric that can support heavy objects.

Source: KAIST

According to the KAIST team, the grippers were designed to enable the strips to intertwine and unwind into a woven structure.

The end result was a woven gripper weighing 130 g and capable of gripping objects weighing up to 100 kg — significantly outperforming standard grippers of the same weight that cannot lift objects weighing more than 20 kg.

"The woven structure gripper developed by KIST and KAIST has the strengths of a soft robot but can grasp heavy objects at the level of a rigid gripper," explained the researchers. "It can be manufactured in a variety of sizes, from coins to cars, and can grip objects of various shapes and weights, from thin cards to flowers, so it is expected to be used in fields such as industry, logistics, and housework that require soft grippers."

An article detailing the soft gripper, “Grasping through dynamic weaving with entangled closed loops,” appears in the journal Nature Communications.