Looks pretty effective. Here's how it works:
... An everyday party balloon filled with ground coffee -- any variety will do -- is attached to a robotic arm. The coffee-filled balloon presses down and deforms around the desired object, and then a vacuum sucks the air out of the balloon, solidifying its grip. When the vacuum is released, the balloon becomes soft again, and the gripper lets go.
Coffee, Jaeger said, is an example of a particulate material, which is characterized by large aggregates of individually solid particles. Particulate materials have a so-called "jamming transition," which turns their behavior from fluidlike to solidlike when the particles can no longer slide past each other.
This phenomenon is familiar to coffee drinkers who have ever bought vacuum-packed coffee -- hard as a brick until the package is unsealed.
"The ground coffee grains are like lots of small gears," Lipson said. "When they are not pressed together they can roll over each other and flow. When they are pressed together just a little bit, the teeth interlock, and they become solid."
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