Active Vibration Fluidization for Granular Jamming Grippers

Cameron Coombe, James Brett, Raghav Mishra, Gary W Delaney, David Howard

Abstract:

Granular jamming has recently become popular
in soft robotics with widespread applications including indus-
trial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work
has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the
nature of granular physics to improve jamming performance,
however this is generally underrepresented in the literature
compared to its potential impact. We present the first research
that exploits vibration-based fluidisation actively (e.g., during
a grip) to elicit bespoke performance from granular jamming
grippers. We augment a conventional universal gripper with
a computer-controlled audio exciter, which is attached to the
gripper via a 3D printed mount, and build an automated test
rig to allow large-scale data collection to explore the effects
of active vibration. We show that vibration in soft jamming
grippers can improve holding strength. In a series of studies,
we show that frequency and amplitude of the waveforms are key
determinants to performance, and that jamming performance
is also dependent on temporal properties of the induced
waveform. We hope to encourage further study focused on
active vibrational control of jamming in soft robotics to improve
performance and increase diversity of potential applications