I'm designing a robot gripper that needs to pickup an electronic device (the size of half a laptop) and move it around. The problem is that when the device gets picked up, I need to establish a USB connection (the device has one of those small USB connectors.
I was thinking about designing a PCB with an SMD right angle USB connector in one side and a few fat pads on the other. I would manually attach the connector to the device before the robot picks it up, and I would have some sort of spring on the gripper to make the USB connection. Something like the ones used in the SD cards, but bigger.
Question is: do you have another suggestion or know what component to use to make the electrical contact?