Engineers at JAIST built a soft gripper called EleTac inspired by an elephant's trunk tip. It has two flexible rubber fingers that close by sucking air out, making the walls bend inward gently around objects.

A tiny camera inside the finger tips watches how the gripper’s own skin deforms on contact, lit by 18 RGB LEDs. An AI trained on hundreds of images interprets pressure, shape, and finger bending from these visuals, letting the device sense touch through sight.

Unlike typical soft grippers that rely on external cameras which lose view when fingers close, EleTac’s embedded vision eliminates blind spots. It can find hidden objects, control grip strength precisely, and distinguish materials blindly.