Wu Changchun, Liu Hao, Lin Senyuan, Li Yunquan, Chen Yonghua
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Shien-Ming Wu School of Intelligent Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2023 May 18;8(2):209. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics8020209.
The compliance of conventional granular jamming universal grippers is limited due to the increasing friction among particles when enveloping an object. This property limits the applications of such grippers. In this paper, we propose a fluidic-based approach for universal gripper which has a much higher compliance compared to conventional granular jamming universal grippers. The fluid is made of micro-particles suspended in liquid. Jamming transition of the dense granular suspension fluid from a fluid (hydrodynamic interactions) to solid-like state (frictional contacts) in the gripper is achieved by external pressure from the inflation of an airbag. The basic jamming mechanism and theoretical analysis of the proposed fluid is investigated, and a prototype universal gripper based on the fluid is developed. The proposed universal gripper exhibits advantageous compliance and grasping robustness in sample grasping of delicate objects, such as plants and sponge objects, where the traditional granular jamming universal gripper fails.
传统颗粒堵塞式通用夹具的柔顺性有限，因为在包裹物体时颗粒间的摩擦力会增加。这一特性限制了此类夹具的应用。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于流体的通用夹具方法，与传统颗粒堵塞式通用夹具相比，它具有更高的柔顺性。该流体由悬浮在液体中的微粒组成。通过气囊充气产生的外部压力，使夹具中稠密颗粒悬浮液从流体状态（流体动力学相互作用）转变为类固体状态（摩擦接触），从而实现堵塞转变。研究了所提出流体的基本堵塞机制和理论分析，并开发了基于该流体的通用夹具原型。在所提出的通用夹具在抓取植物和海绵物体等易碎物体的样本时表现出了有利的柔顺性和抓取鲁棒性，而传统颗粒堵塞式通用夹具在此类情况下则无法胜任。
