OMNIGRASP
Omnigrasp mission is to create low-power, dexterous robotic grippers for the pick-and-place of the most challenging objects. Omnigrasp brings innovation in food logistics, harvesting, palletising and home assistance, where current robotic grippers cannot handle the multitude of shapes, delicate materials and surfaces of the objects involved. Omnigrasp unique soft grippers technology uses electro-active surfaces and soft materials to build grippers with super-human grasping abilities. Objects are grabbed using pure shear force, with no damage on the object guaranteed, and using extremely low power consumption. Omnigrasp grippers are delicate enough to pick-up raspberries and strong enough to lift kg of loads, think mango, pumpkin, watermelon. Challenging flexible objects such as stacked textiles can be easily grasped thanks to electroadhesion. At home Omnigrasp grippers can handle glassware, clothing, food, all with the same grippers, enabling assistive robots.
Omnigrasp brings its know-how in electro-adhesion soft grippers. Omnigrasp has been incubated at EPFL, Switzerland from 2020 and at Politecnico di Bari, Italy from 2021, spinning-off world-leading research groups in soft robotic grippers. Thanks to Omnigrasp unique technology, its advanced soft gripper products with soft and flexible silicone fingers grasp over 1.5 kg (1000x the fingers weight) and are delicate enough to handle objects such as fruit and vegetables without damaging them. Omnigrasp expertise includes electroadhesion design, fabrication, and testing, development of mechanical and electronic interfaces. The startup has been awarded prestigious grants during its incubation phase: Bridge PoC (130 kCHF) from Innosuisse and Swiss National Science Foundation in 2020 and Innogrant (100 kCHF) from EPFL in 2021, plus has received the 1st prize in the industry challenge of the EuroEAP conference in 2021. Omnigrasp acts as a technology provider, developing the smart grippers that integrate electroadhesive fingertips and soft force sensors for the pick and place of flexible objects.