But it is actually a new assistive glove – albeit featuring what its developers call 'banana fingers'. The glove has been created by researchers from MIT, who used an autonomous knitting machine to create it. The banana fingers are inflatable, and when pumped up, they allow the glove to grip objects including a Coke can or a tennis ball. Instead, the MIT researchers developed an autonomous knitting machine called PneuAct, that can knit soft, pneumatic devices unaided. 'PneuAct uses a machine knitting process, not dissimilar to your grandma's plastic needle knitting, but this machine operates autonomously,' the MIT release explains.

Source: The Star May 05, 2022 20:10 UTC