According to one embodiment, there is taught herein a family of “branched” variants of the traditional scissor mechanism, in which each stage is formed from more than two arms, joined at their midpoints by a branched rivet. In one embodiment arms in adjacent stages are joined at their endpoints with joints that allow for rotation in a single plane. Each resulting mechanism has one degree of freedom in its motion. It deploys from a compact, collapsed state to an extended state. One embodiment is a grasping member that is mechanically coupled to a scissor mechanism so that when scissor mechanism is collapsed the grasping member is open. Then, when the scissor mechanism is extended the grasping member becomes closed.