Soft Robotic Honeycomb Jamming Gripper Design

Jamming grippers, based on the principles of granular material jamming, have gathered significant attention over the years. Jamming grippers can perform well in grasping objects of different shapes and sizes. However, such designs tend to be bulky and often not suitable to take bending loads. In this paper, a novel idea of using a honeycomb structure in a jamming gripper is being explored. Using honeycomb as the jamming material, it is possible to design a slender and lightweight finger for dexterous gripping. The bending stiffness of the finger can be varied by modulating the air pressure within the membrane, allowing the honeycomb sandwich structure to transit between unjammed (flexible) and jammed (rigid) states. Various materials of honeycomb structure, fabric and reinforcement were explored to find a suitable combination of materials for the gripper. Experiments were conducted on the gripper and the honeycomb jamming gripper displayed great grasping capabilities.