Manipulation

Suction Grasping

Suction grasping is object acquisition using vacuum pressure through one or more compliant suction cups, requiring only a single reachable, sufficiently flat and non-porous surface patch rather than antipodal contact geometry. It dominates logistics picking for boxes, polybags, and consumer goods, and featured centrally in Amazon Picking Challenge entries. Dex-Net 3.0 formalized learned suction grasp quality prediction, modeling seal formation and wrench resistance from depth images.

Why it matters for physical AI

A single-point grasp with millimeter pose tolerance is vastly easier to automate at scale, which is why suction underpins most deployed warehouse picking and mixed-bin handling systems.