By Mark Brown, Wired UK

Engineers from Cornell University and the University of Chicago have built a robotic hand that can grip objects and throw them. It can shoot hoops, toss bolts and springs into boxes, and hit the bull's-eye in darts.

[partner id="wireduk"]The robo-hand features a "universal jamming gripper," basically a balloon filled with sand. Or, as the researchers put it, a "mass of granular material encased in an elastic membrane." The hand can be quickly hardened by evacuating the air inside the membrane, like vacuum-packing. If the gripper is placed over a small object — a ball, a dart, a coin — the hand tightly grasps it as the air is released. By pumping air back into the hand, the robot loosens its grip and can effectively "shoot" objects a meter or so in front of it.

"The typical approach for designing a universal robot gripper is to take inspiration from the human hand," the team explains in an FAQ. "These mechanical human-like robot hands are often incredible machines, but they are also complex and expensive.

"Our approach is a sharp deviation from the human-inspired approach, and it proves to be simple, low cost, and still highly capable."

The team says the gripper would be handy in any situation where a robot needs to grip or lift a wide variety of items, including items it has never seen before. One specific example would be the ability to manipulate an improvised explosive device.

The next step for this Darpa-funded project is to the further refine the arm.

"In the long term we are striving to apply jamming in a more general way to adaptive robots and structures that might reconfigure, locomote, or recover from damage," the team explains.

Or sink a three.

Photo: John Amend/Cornell University Video: Cornell University