“This robot catches jellyfish with a gentle ‘hug’ ”

“Jellyfish and other gelatinous animals … have a huge amount of potential to teach us things”

Nina Sinatra and her team described a new device August 28 in Science Robotics.

A gelatinous creatures, with tentacles having umbrella-shaped bodies, are 95 percent water. But their fragile bodies have made it hard for scientists to safely catch them for study. Jellyfish seem made for their watery world. Now , A new soft robot that mimics a human hand can gently catch jellyfish without harm.

Resembling like a robotic hand, has a six soft fingers can cradle the flopsy and catch the jellyfish.

The robot looks like a finger-clip onto a 3D- Printed “palm”.It looks like a rectangular box.The Scientist made the fingers out of layers of soft and rubbery silicone.One surface has a stiffer layer embedded with tiny nanofibers.The scientist made this layer tougher and less bendy.

Inside each finger there is a channel which water can flow.When directed to grab a jelly , the robot uses the pump to fill the channel with water from around the robot.This makes the fingers curl towards the stiffer side and close in around the jelly.

At first the scientist designed the hands with four fingers ,two each on opposite side of the palm.But jelly fish easily wriggled out.As we were trying to go in and give them a little soft hug, they would just exits state left. Hence this can be solved by adding a fingers at top and bottom of the palm.

The Scientist says that robot can help biologists study jellies in the ocean, and their should test it in the ocean.It require attaching the hand to a deep sea submersible.The new robot should survive that. Its materials can withstand the pressure of the deep sea. Sea water won’t corrode them either. The robot might someday include sensors, samplers that can grab a bit of DNA or cameras that take photos. Getting data on the creatures’ features in the ocean might mean scientists won’t even need retrieve the animal to study it. The robotic hand also demonstrates how robots can take on all sorts of shapes and sizes. “Robots can be made of squishy things. They can be made of foam. They can be kind of whatever you imagine them to be”.

Giant robot jelly fish. It's real and It works