It's a game a lot of us played as children—and maybe even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it would ...

Steel measuring tape is an interesting material, in that it's rigid enough to hold its shape when extended, but flexible enough that it gives way under pressure. Scientists have taken advantage of ...

The Zimmer Group has designed a custom gripper that enables one robot to handle both a crankshaft and an engine block.

As robotics has advanced, industry has steadily adopted more robots to automate many kinds of grunt work. More than 540,000 ...

Millirobots with tunable adhesive microstructures grip and release solids and liquids in both air and underwater environments ...

That’s because the tape is both robust and flexible; can be stored in a small container when retracted; and can reach far ...

But to engineer, this game was an inspiration, suggesting that measuring tape could become a great material for a robotic gripper. The grippers would be a particularly good fit for agriculture ...