Ultrafast capturing in-flight objects with reprogrammable working speed ranges

In-flight high-speed object capturing is crucial in nature to improve survival and adaptation to the environment, such as the predation of frogs, leopards, and eagles. Despite its ubiquitousness in nature, capturing fast-moving objects is extremely challenging in engineering implementations. In this paper, we report an ultrafast gripper based on tunable bistable structures. Different from current designs which are only suitable for objects with certain speed ranges once the grippers are fabricated, the working range of object speed of the proposed gripper could be reprogrammed by controlling the sensitivity of the structures. We present the design and fabrication of the proposed gripper in detail. A theoretical model is introduced to construct the energy landscape of the structures and the force response of the gripper when programmed to different states. The results show that in the original state, the gripper is capable of capturing a flying table tennis ball with a high speed of 15 m/s in only 6 ms. When the proposed gripper is controlled to the ultra-sensitive state, a flying ball with only 1 m/s could also be captured. This work broadens the frontiers of in-flight capturing design, and we envision broader promising applications.