Bionic Elephant Trunk, Bionic Handling Assistant, Festo AG & Co. KG, Esslingen am Neckar, Germany

The Bionic Handling Assistant is a light, free-moving "third hand" system. Thanks to its structural compliance, direct contact between humans and machines humans and machine is now no longer a danger.

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Flexible movement and precise gripping: at first glance, the Bionic Handling Assistant appears to be a readily yielding gripping arm whose structure and overall operation are modelled on the elephant's trunk. Over and above its pure utility value, however, the system serves as a development platform that combines a wide diversity of technologies and components.

The system is now being supplemented by a simplified interface for image and speech recognition. The Bionic Handling Assistant is thus now able to autonomously grasp objects, without the need for programming or manual control.

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Elephant trunk as model. With the Bionic E-Trunk our developers have taken the idea of miniaturisation further and have implemented electrically driven natural movements for the first time.

Find out more: https://www.festo.com/bionice-trunk

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