Have you ever tried to grab something but couldn’t because it was too slippery? Well guess what, a new type of gloves helps! These gloves have a sucker on them with a motion detector. The suckers turn on when they detect motion.

“Being able to grasp things underwater could be good for search and rescue. It could be good for archaeology. It also could be good for marine biology,” says Michael Bartlett. He’s a mechanical engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Each finger also has a Tic Tac–sized sensor that detects nearby surfaces. When the sensor nears an object, it switches the sucker on that finger to sticky mode. Bartlett and his colleagues used the glove to pick up various objects underwater. The glove was able to latch onto a toy car, a spoon and a bowl. It could also snag a delicate, Jell-O-like bead of hydrogel.

Each sucker, on its own, can lift about one kilogram in the air. Underwater, it can hoist even more weight thanks to the help of buoyancy, Bartlett says. Adding more suckers could give the glove an even stronger grip.

Article Link: Like an octopus, this glove lets fingers grip slippery objects _ Science News Explores.pdf