Other investors in Grabit include Formation 8, Draper Nexus, Danhua Capital, Samsung, Brother Industries, ABB, Shanghai Electric, Flex, NTT Docomo and the Esquel Group. Nike is one of Grabit’s investors as well as one of the company’s first customers. Prahlad currently holds 36 separate patents related to electroadhesion, with more pending. Harsha Prahlad, discovered the concept of electroroadhesion while working at the non-profit organization SRI International. Grabit’s co-founder and chief technology and products officer, Dr. Grabit’s electroadhesive gripper enables robots to stack such materials, like leathers, meshes and composite fibers. When charged correctly, the electrodes create an electric field that adheres to nearly any surface, allowing the robot gripper to pick and place the target material or part.Īccording to Grabit, until the introduction of electroadhesion, manufacturers have been unable to automate the task of fine materials handling. The process uses a flat pad of electrodes to generate positive and negative charges on its surface. Rather than attempting to mimic the actions of the human hand, Grabit’s technology uses static electricity-referred to as electroroadhesion-to handle materials. In fact, a recent announcement by robotics start-up Grabit shows that work in this area is advancing rapidly and even proving itself capable of outperforming humans. The difficulties that remain in robotic material handling applications do not, however, mean that significant advances aren’t continuing to be made. But the goal of meeting or exceeding the dexterity of the human hand still lies beyond the reach of most EOAT technologies. Certainly, there have been significant advances in various end of arm tooling (EOAT) components that can handle a variety of materials with ease. From the rise of collaborative robots and expanded integration of vision systems to the simplification of robot programming and control, robotic technologies-and the companies that supply them-are enjoying the benefits of industrial interest in the technology not seen since the automotive industry’s robotic boom of the 1980s.ĭespite the considerable advances made in robotic technologies over the past few decades, one area that has remained problematic is material handling. Robots have been one of the hottest automation stories of the past few years.

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