Decades of research and development have been invested in various forms of railguns, coilguns and mass drivers. See http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Table_of Contents1.html
Research at the Space Studies Institute in the 1980s refined the mass driver concept. See http://ssi.org/introduction-to-research/research-report/# mass-driver-iii
The innovation of the Electromagnetic Regolith Excavator is to eliminate the use of a bucket or other container that is accelerated by the magnetic fields. Instead, magnetic particles in the regolith itself (nickel-iron grains and/or magnetite) are put into motion and they carry along with them a to-be-determined fraction (perhaps all) of the co-resident non-magnetic regolith particles.
The Electromagnetic Regolith Excavator applies only attractive forces: no anchoring is required. This enables robotic and crewed spacecraft to safely collect surface material from asteroid targets that may be tumbling. Because no hard connection is required, no strong hazardous forces can be imparted to the collection apparatus aboard the spacecraft.