Tiny robotic hand has the gentlest touch

A tiny pair of robotic tweezers with the most sensitive grip yet can pick up and move individual cells without damaging them, guided by their own sense of touch. They could be used to probe the properties of living tissue, or create microscale and nanoscale devices.

The robotic gripper can exert as little as 20 nanoNewtons of force and are the first to be able to feel the strength of their grip on objects so delicately, says Yu Sun of the University of Toronto in Canada, who led their development.

"We're applying very well-known concepts from robotics down to the micrometre scale," Sun says. Previous pincers are fumbling by comparison, unable to sense such feedback. "You would break the objects being manipulated, or break the microgrippers."

Read full story at New Scientist.