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 extend before bending. But to engineers at the University of California San Diego, 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 applications, as their extremities are soft enough to grab fragile fruits and vegetables, researchers wrote. The devices are also low-cost and safe around humans.The team published their process and design in the journal Science Advances on April 9, 2025. They call their robot GRIP-tape, with GRIP serving as an acronym for Grasping and Rolling In-Plane.