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Gripping and holding of objects are key tasks for robotic manipulators. Thedevelopment of universal grippers able to pick up unfamiliar objects of widelyvarying shape and surface properties remains, however, challenging. Mostcurrent designs are based on the multi-fingered hand, but this approachintroduces hardware and software complexities. These include large numbers ofcontrollable joints, the need for force sensing if objects are to be handledsecurely without crushing them, and the computational overhead to decide howmuch stress each finger should apply and where. Here we demonstrate acompletely different approach to a universal gripper. Individual fingers arereplaced by a single mass of granular material that, when pressed onto a targetobject, flows around it and conforms to its shape. Upon application of a vacuumthe granular material contracts and hardens quickly to pinch and hold theobject without requiring sensory feedback. We find that volume changes of lessthan 0.5% suffice to grip objects reliably and hold them with forces exceedingmany times their weight. We show that the operating principle is the ability ofgranular materials to transition between an unjammed, deformable state and ajammed state with solid-like rigidity. We delineate three separate mechanisms,friction, suction and interlocking, that contribute to the gripping force.Using a simple model we relate each of them to the mechanical strength of thejammed state. This opens up new possibilities for the design of simple, yethighly adaptive systems that excel at fast gripping of complex objects.

Universal Robotic Gripper based on the Jamming of Granular Material