Characteristic Analysis of Jamming Grasping Based on Vacuum Forming Method

Abstract

With the evolution of robot technology, robot hands capable of grasping objects of various shapes and sizes are required for the automation of production processes. In a previous study, a soft robot gripper based on the jamming transition phenomenon was proposed. However, it was difficult to grasp fragile objects and small diameter objects. In this study, we propose a new grasping method in a soft gripper using vacuum adhesion and jamming transition, where the pressing motion is substituted by vacuum adsorption. We investigated the relationship between the gripping performance and the increase in the contact area between the gripper and the grasped object.