Jamming for a 2D granular material

Universal robotic gripper based on the jamming of granular material

Gripping and holding of objects are key tasks for robotic manipulators. The development of universal grippers able to pick up unfamiliar objects of widely varying shape and surface properties remains, however, challenging. Most current designs are based on the multifingered hand, but this approach introduces hardware and software complexities. These include large numbers of controllable joints,...

Jamming of Granular Matter

Fragile granular jamming

We demonstrate experimentally that the route to a jammed state for a set of bi-dispersed frictional disks, subjected to uni-axial compression from a random initial unjammed state, consists of a consolidation state, a fragile jammed state, and finally a rigid jammed state. In the consolidation regime, the pressure on the sides increases very slowly with the packing fraction φ and there are no de...

Jamming transition in granular systems.

Recent simulations have predicted that near jamming for collections of spherical particles, there will be a discontinuous increase in the mean contact number Z at a critical volume fraction phi(c). Above phi(c), Z and the pressure P are predicted to increase as power laws in phi-phi(c). In experiments using photoelastic disks we corroborate a rapid increase in Z at phi(c) and power-law behavior...

Bio-Inspired Connective Granular Jamming for a Robotic Limb

2 Granular jamming consists of constraining a large quantity of small particles within a membrane, similar to the use of hydrostatic and muscle forces in invertebrates to stiffen their bodies. However, current works on jamming have not examined the effect of coupling particles together, akin to connective tissue in animals. We present a study which provides a comparison between coupled and deco...