Passive Particle Jamming and Its Stiffening of Soft Robotic Grippers
Passive Particle Jamming and Its Stiffening of Soft Robotic Grippers
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DOI：
10.1109/tro.2016.2636899
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发表时间：
2017-04-01
影响因子：
7.8
通讯作者：
Wei, Ying
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Li, Yingtian;Chen, Yonghua;Wei, Ying
软夹持器的顺应性有助于它们在抓取不规则形状的物体和与环境形成软接触方面比刚性夹持器具有更大的优势。由于相对较小的压力，软夹持器缺乏更广泛应用所需的刚度。颗粒干扰经常被报道为刚度控制的一种手段。与以往利用真空进行粒子干扰的研究不同，本文提出了一种新的无源粒子干扰原理，该原理不需要任何真空电源或其他控制手段。所提出的方法是通过简单地修补硅橡胶软致动器和颗粒包（由应变限制膜制成），以形成一个完整的夹持手指。软致动器的膨胀向颗粒包施加压力，导致颗粒包内的颗粒堵塞。更大的挤压压力将导致更紧密的颗粒堵塞，从而增加手指的刚度。手指的刚度是可控的，因为它是成比例的致动器的空气压力，这已在本研究中的实验验证。在实验研究中，当空气压力从20 kPa变化到80 kPa时，刚度可以增加六倍以上。报告的发现可以增强软机器人抓取器的能力，使得更多的机器人拾取操作可以由软抓取器执行。
The compliance of soft grippers contributes to their great superiority over rigid grippers in grasping irregularly shaped objects and forming soft contact with environments. Due to a relatively small pressure, soft grippers lack the stiffness required for wider applications. Particle jamming has been frequently reported as a means of stiffness control. Unlike previous research using vacuum for particle jamming, this paper proposes a novel passive particle jamming principle that does not need any vacuum power or other control means. The proposed method is by simply patching a silicone rubber soft actuator and a pack (made of strain-limiting membrane) of particles to form an integral gripping finger. The inflation of the soft actuator applies a pressure to the particle pack causing particles inside it to jam. A larger squeezing pressure will result in tighter particle jamming, thus increasing the stiffness of the finger. The stiffness of the finger is controllable as it is proportional to the actuator's air pressure, which has been verified by experiments in this research. The stiffness can increase more than six fold when air pressure changes from 20 to 80 kPa in the experimental studies. The reported discovery may enhance the capabilities of soft robotic grippers so that more robotic picking operations could be performed by soft grippers.