Zhu Mingzhu, Xie Mengying, Mori Yoshiki, Dai Junyue, Kawamura Sadao, Yue Xiaokui
School of Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
College of Precision Instrument and Opto-electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
Soft Robot. 2024 Feb;11(1):85-94. doi: 10.1089/soro.2022.0232. Epub 2023 Aug 21.
This article presents the design and fabrication of a variable stiffness soft gripper based on layer jamming. Traditional layer jamming units have some limitations, such as complicated multistep fabrication, difficulties in system integration, and diminishing in stiffen effect. In this article, a variable stiffness soft gripper is proposed based on the rotational jamming layers to reduce the slippery phenomenon between layers. To fabricate the proposed complex design, a two-step fabrication method is presented. First, multimaterial 3D printing is applied to directly print out the soft finger body with jamming layers. Second, mold casting is used to fabricate the outer vacuum chamber. The proposed gripper contains a main framework and three identical variable stiffness soft fingers. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design, the soft gripper is mounted on a robotic arm to test its ability of grasping heavy objects while following complex grasping trajectory. The gripper can successfully grasp an object up to 360 g. Grasping robustness of the proposed gripper can be guaranteed when the robotic arm is moving at acceleration up to 7 m/s. The results prove that the proposed design of the soft gripper can improve the grippers grasping robustness during high-speed movement.
本文介绍了一种基于层间干涉的可变刚度软抓手的设计与制造。传统的层间干涉装置存在一些局限性，如制造过程复杂、多步骤，系统集成困难以及刚度增强效果逐渐减弱。在本文中，提出了一种基于旋转干涉层的可变刚度软抓手，以减少层间的滑动现象。为了制造所提出的复杂设计，提出了一种两步制造方法。首先，应用多材料3D打印直接打印出带有干涉层的软手指主体。其次，使用模具铸造来制造外部真空腔。所提出的抓手包含一个主框架和三个相同的可变刚度软手指。为了证明该设计的有效性，将软抓手安装在机器人手臂上，以测试其在遵循复杂抓取轨迹时抓取重物的能力。该抓手能够成功抓取重达360克的物体。当机器人手臂以高达7米/秒²的加速度移动时，所提出的抓手的抓取鲁棒性能够得到保证。结果证明，所提出的软抓手设计能够提高抓手在高速运动期间的抓取鲁棒性。
