We are investigating inexpensive, compliant end effectors for non-prehensile grasping of objects from the floor. We believe that such assistive robotic systems can address a niche for in-home (semi)autonomous mobile manipulators. In this domain, robots that retrieve dropped objects from the floor may be particularly useful for the motor impaired.
To this end, we designed and implemented a straight forward and inexpensive end effector affixed to a 1-DoF arm attached to an iRobot Create.