Hardware

Parallel-Jaw Gripper

A parallel-jaw gripper is a two-fingered end effector whose jaws translate along a shared axis while remaining parallel to each other, closing on an object from opposite sides. Its single actuated degree of freedom makes it simple, robust, and easy to model, which is why it dominates industrial manipulation and serves as the default embodiment in most grasping datasets and robot learning benchmarks.

Why it matters for physical AI

Most large-scale robot demonstration datasets and learned grasp policies assume a parallel-jaw embodiment, so its capabilities and limits, such as no in-hand reorientation, directly shape what current manipulation models can do.