Grip->It, a new robot gripper competition for secondary schools
IDLab-AIRO is a partner in Grip->It, a new STEM project by Dwengo for students in the fifth and sixth year of secondary school. In teams, students design, build and program a robot gripper and try to pick up as many everyday objects as possible. The pilot year runs in 2026-2027 and ends with a first Grip->It competition.
The challenge
Design and build a gripper that fits on a robot arm. Then program the arm and the gripper to pick up as many objects as possible from a test set of everyday items. There is no single correct solution: teams experiment, measure and improve their design over several sessions. In the process, they discover how mechanics, electronics and software come together in a working robot.
For students and teachers
Grip->It is aimed at the third grade of secondary education (the fifth and sixth year). Students go through the complete design cycle: analyze the task, develop a solution, design and make components, connect and program the gripper, and test its performance. Teachers receive the teaching material, the technical background and support to run the project in class or in an after-school workshop.
Dwengo develops a mobile robot platform with a robot arm, a gripper kit to build yourself and material to test with. Programming runs in Dwengo’s Blockly environment, which supports graphical and text-based programming. The existing Dwengo course on microcontrollers, electronics and programming gives extra support.
Grip->It brings the theme of our research and teaching on intelligent robot manipulation into the classroom: how a gripper’s shape, its sensors and its control together decide what a robot can pick up. The gripper kit builds on Halberd, the open-source, Arduino-compatible gripper coupling that our researchers developed to integrate tactile sensors on the grippers of our collaborative robots. Students work with the same building block that we use in the lab.
Pilot year and first competition
For the 2026-2027 school year, Dwengo is looking for teachers and students who want to pilot the project and take part in a first, small Grip->It competition at the end of the year. The final takes place on 26 May 2027 at De Krook library in Ghent, the same day as the final of the social robot competition. Interested schools can contact Dwengo. All information is on dwengo.org/en/gripit.