A variable stiffness gripper based on differential drive particle jamming

Compared with rigid grippers, soft grippers show fantastic adaptability and flexibility in grasping irregularly shaped and fragile objects. However, the low stiffness of the soft actuator limits the scope of applications. Particle jamming has emerged as an important method to adjust the stiffness of soft grippers. This paper proposes a novel particle jamming mechanism based on the differential pressure drive. With the differential drive particle jamming mechanism, a soft actuator is designed, which is characterized by a dual-deformable chamber structure in which one chamber is filled with particles. The simultaneous inflation of the two chambers will result in the bending behavior without significant stiffening. However, if the air chamber is pressurized with a larger pressure, the differential pressure will cause the particles inside the particle chamber to jam each other, which increases the stiffness of the actuator significantly. Thus, the differential drive particle jamming mechanism can achieve the independent control of the stiffness and the bending angle. Both theoretical and experimental studies in this area have shown that the gripper based on the differential drive particle jamming mechanism can stiffen itself effectively, and achieve the independent control of the stiffness and the bending angle, which can be adopted in applications where both high stiffness and dexterity are required.