{"id":101255,"date":"2020-01-22T23:33:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T07:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/this-ultrasonic-gripper-could-let-robots-hold-things-without-touching-them"},"modified":"2020-01-22T23:33:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T07:33:20","slug":"this-ultrasonic-gripper-could-let-robots-hold-things-without-touching-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/this-ultrasonic-gripper-could-let-robots-hold-things-without-touching-them","title":{"rendered":"This ultrasonic gripper could let robots hold things without touching them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-ultrasonic-gripper-could-let-robots-hold-things-without-touching-them.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If robots are to help out in places like hospitals and phone repair shops, they\u2019re going to need a light touch. And what\u2019s lighter than not touching at all? Researchers have created a gripper that <a href=\"https:\/\/ethz.ch\/en\/news-and-events\/eth-news\/news\/2020\/01\/the-robot-that-grips-without-touching.html\">uses ultrasonics to suspend an object in midair<\/a>, potentially making it suitable for the most delicate tasks.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s done with an array of tiny speakers that emit sound at very carefully controlled frequencies and volumes. These produce a sort of standing pressure wave that can hold an object up or, if the pressure is coming from multiple directions, hold it in place or move it around.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of \u201cacoustic levitation,\u201d as it\u2019s called, is not exactly new \u2014 we see it being used as a trick here and there, but so far there have been no obvious practical applications. Marcel Schuck and his team at ETH Z\u00fcrich, however, show that a portable such device could easily find a place in processes where tiny objects must be very lightly held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If robots are to help out in places like hospitals and phone repair shops, they\u2019re going to need a light touch. And what\u2019s lighter than not touching at all? Researchers have created a gripper that uses ultrasonics to suspend an object in midair, potentially making it suitable for the most delicate tasks. It\u2019s done with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1512,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-mobile-phones","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}