A 3D Printed Soft Robotic Gripper with a Variable Stiffness Enabled by Layer Jamming Technology

In this research, a pneumatic variable stiffness soft robotic gripper was developed and fabricated in two materials using customized additive manufacturing. A novel positive layer jamming technology was developed for tuning stiffness of the gripper. Positive pressure layer jamming has a higher performance potential than conventional vacuum layer jamming since a higher pressure can be applied, at least 2x higher in terms of payload capacity. Two different thermoplastics materials are printed together to form a relatively hard backbone and a relatively soft airtight actuation bellows. The implementation of positive layer jamming will be described, along with the additive manufacturing techniques used to produce the gripper and the test results of the final design. Experimental tests show that this soft gripper was able to vary its stiffness about 20x fold with the positive layer jamming. This work demonstrates that the positive pressure jamming offers a novel method for varying soft robot stiffness with higher payload capacity than than the conventional vacuum based layer jamming technology. Accepted by IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, March 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.31...