Experimental analysis of the holding-force of the jamming grippers

Recently, jamming grippers have been widely used in industry as they are capable to grip unacquainted objects. The distinctive properties of jamming grippers have been obtained from the nature of the granular materials in rigid and flowing states. However, the optimum materials properties to be used is still an open question to be answered. In the proposed, a jamming gripper holding-force is investigated experimentally for different materials, granular-size and water-contents. The design of experiment (DoE) is utilized, 2
³
full factorial design, to determine the relationship of each of the parameters with the gripper holding-force, and any interaction between the design parameters. The materials water-contents was found to be the most determinist factor, followed by the granular-size for the same material. Less water-contents and large granular-size resulted the highest holding-force of the gripper. No interaction between the design factors was reported. The proposed study is extendable to study other granular materials properties.