Empire Robotics Inc, a spinout of Cornell University, is commercializing robotics technology through its first product, a universal robot gripper for use in food processing, automotive, consumer goods, and other industries. This gripper solves a fundamental problem in the $25B industrial automation market of gripping and manipulating varied objects. Empire Robotics offers a flexible universal robotic gripper that can manipulate a wide range of inconsistent and randomly oriented objects for industrial automation using the principal of jamming granular materials encased in a flexible membrane.
The gripper is a ball-shaped elastic membrane filled with granular material attached to a robotic arm. The air pressure inside the ball is manipulated to adjust the softness or hardness of the gripper, allowing it to conform around and squeeze objects.
