Design of a Granular Jamming Universal Gripper

Robotic gripper design has been an active research area because of its widespread in robotics applications and its high demand in the today’s healthcare automation market. Here we propose the design, integration and preliminary experiments of a universal gripper based on granular jamming: the prototype is based on low-cost components and it can be easily assembled and used for a variety of task, including grasping of daily life objects in a domestic context. The paper presents a set of technical solutions where different type of granules are used and combined with different actuation (i.e., an electric vacuum pump, a medical syringe and manual actuation). Experimental trials performed under the different configurations show that a set of 8 daily-life objects can be firmly grasped with a 100% successful rate by means of an end-effector whose cost is less than 20$. This represents a novelty in current market of robotic end-effectors and offers the possibility of low-cost robotics for daily life applications in medical application.